New Memoir Unpacks The Life And Tragic Death Of ‘The Hot One’

When Carolyn Murnick met her childhood nice buddy Ashley, it becomes like love before everything sight. They were in essential college — Ashley had just moved into the region, and they have become inseparable, sharing all their secrets and dreams. As frequently takes place, as they got older, they drifted apart. Ashley would flow to Los Angeles, start relationships with younger celebrities, and being profitable dancing at golf equipment. Carolyn lived in New York and labored inside the literary global.

Then, on an iciness’s night in 2001, 22-year-vintage Ashley Ellerin becomes found brutally murdered in her Hollywood Hills home. The tabloids ran the information because Ashley changed into approximately to go out with actor Ashton Kutcher. But Murnick tells the real story of Ashley’s tragic death and colorful existence in her new memoir, The Hot One.

She says the e-book’s name references the manner our society tries to categorize younger girls. “You have a set of women collectively, one will become the recent one, or one is perhaps the conservative one or the clever one, and in my book, I explore the ways that those labels kind of take keep, and the way they can type of influence your feelings of self.”

Interview Highlights

On her courting with Ashley, toward the stop

I realized that being around Ashley changed into making me feel uncomfortable with myself. I think that’s real for lots of female friendships, particularly in your teen years — which you’re looking to your pals for how to be inside the international. After they begin making different decisions, it can feel like a referendum on your personal picks, and you start questioning, “Does she have it all discovered? Should I be more like this? Can I be more like this?”

On sitting in on the pretrial hearings for Ashley’s alleged killer

New Memoir Unpacks The Life And Tragic Death Of 'The Hot One' 13

As I write approximately inside the book, and as Ashley became open with me, she turned into dabbling in the sex industry in the last year of her existence, running in strip clubs and doing light escorting. And at the time of her murder, she became flying to Vegas for the weekends to try this, and I suppose that she saved that a part of her existence cut loose her LA existence.

And I suppose the defense clearly kept trying to harp on it. Every witness who got on the stand turned into requested about her pole dancing and changed into she someone who turned into taken into consideration promiscuous and turned into the person who, you know, entertained the corporation of lots of guys. Unfortunately, I see that as an aspect that is used to type of erode sympathy for woman victims, each in the media and court docket proceedings, and I’d love for this e-book to beat back approximately those ideas of the way that girl victims are often problematic to a few slut-shaming and light victim-blaming dispositions.

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On how she felt approximately the portrayal of Ashley’s existence

I felt quite a few outrages, and I felt quite a few disconnects, and it additionally felt appalling the way that those forms of questions can serve to strip humanity far away from a sufferer. And the manner that I don’t forget her is as my excellent buddy in girlhood, as a 9-12 months-vintage who performed piano duets with me, and they did nothing to deserve what occurred to he

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