Holly Madison knows about the dark side of the Playboy world better than anyone, so the former Girls Next Door star’s new gig isn’t too surprising. Madison hosts The Playboy Murders, a six-part true crime series exploring various tragedies that intersected with the brand and lifestyle made famous by her ex-boyfriend, Hugh Hefner. “I just felt like I could relate to some of these victims because they were coming from the same kind of career or the same kind of places that I did,” Madison ahead of Monday night’s premiere, saying she was “immediately compelled” by the premise. “I hadn’t heard about so many of these stories and I thought I knew everything about Playboy history and about what happened to all the Playmates and everything,” she adds. “So I really wanted to dive deeper into it.”
The premiere episode on Investigative Discovery (ID) looks at the 2009 murder of model and Playboy hostess Jasmine Fiore, who was found dead and dismembered in a dumpster. Her husband, Ryan Alexander Jenkins, beat Fiore in a jealous rage before mutilating her. (Jenkins, who appeared on the VH1 reality series Megan Wants a Millionaire, later died of suicide.) Although Madison moved out of the Playboy Mansion one year prior, she knew about Fiore’s murder as it made national news. The reality star feels protective of Fiore, in a way, as she knows what it’s like to be in an abusive relationship. “I feel like what I experienced with Hef was definitely emotional and verbal abuse. And I ended up leaving after so many years because the verbal abuse was just getting so bad I couldn’t stand it anymore,” Madison recalls. “When I tell my story, there’s so many people who wanna say, ‘Well, why didn’t you leave? Why did you stay for so long?’ And I love talking about that kind of a thing because I just think there’s such a misunderstanding about it and I can relate.”
