James Ellroy lies in a darkened room brooding about the past. He thinks about his mother, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, who was murdered in 1958, when Ellroy was 10-years-old. The killer has never been found.
Ellroy was born and raised in Los Angeles. When his parents divorced, Ellroy lived with his mother in El Monte during the week, and spent weekends with his Father.
His father, Armand Lee Ellroy, was an accountant and one-time business manager for Rita Hayworth. Ellroy usually adds his father had a massive schlong, and schtooped anything that moved. His father gave Ellroy a copy of Jack Webb’s book The Badge. Ellroy read the book obsessively. He read the story of Elizabeth Short, aka The Black Dahlia, whose severed, mutilated body was discovered on a vacant lot, on the west side of South Norton Avenue, between Coliseum and West 39th, in 1947.
Ellroy merged his mother’s murder with the Black Dahlia’s. He fantasized how he’d save the Dahlia and marry her. He fantasized how he’d save his mother. The fantasies were inspired by guilt and depression.
Before Geneva’s murder, his parents had been going through a rough time. His father was poisoning Ellroy’s mind about his mother. His father let Ellroy do what he wanted. His mother had rules. When she died James had wanted to be free of her. Now he was, he felt guilty.
He grew up lanky, and geeky. He was awkward around girls. He was a WASP at a Jewish school. He hated to be ignored. Ellroy played at being the weirdo. In the schoolyard he riffed on the Black Dahlia, serial killers, and Nazis. He made it look like he didn’t care what others thought. It worked. It made him untouchable.
He flunked school and prowled the neighborhood. He peeped on girls he could only dream about. He broke into their houses, sniffed their panties, drank their parents’ booze, looked in medicine cabinets and popped pills, stole what he wanted. They never knew.
Ellroy lived off T-bird, and the wading from Benzedrex inhalers. It made him grind down his teeth. He tripped. He became homeless. He stole. He did gaol time. His life was in freefall - the parachute was an abscess on his lung, the size of a man’s fist.
Ellroy prayed for a second chance. He got it. He turned his life round and started writing crime novels. Influenced by Hamnett rather than Chandler. At first hooked around his own experience as caddy on a golf course, then the large multi-narrative, police procedurals, re-telling the history of modern America. Ellroy was riffing on the things he obsessed about, the Black Dahlia, sex, violence, bad, bad, bad men coming to grips with their humanity.
Now, Ellroy is one of America’s greatest living novelists, and very few come close. He still lives in L.A. and writes everyday, long hand, ink pen, legal pad, and lies in darkened rooms brooding about the past.
This is a rare clip of James Ellroy, in his trademark Hawaiian shirt (worn in pouring rain), interviewed for the French program Cinéma Cinémas in 1989.
Robber who broke into hair salon is beaten by its black-belt owner and kept as a sex slave for three days… fed only Viagra
The Mail reports on a Russian man who is said to have tried to rob a hair salon, but soon ended up as the victim when the female shop owner overpowered him, tied him up naked and then used him as a sex slave for 3 days.
Viktor Jasinski, 32, admitted to police that he had gone to the salon in Meshchovsk, Russia, with the intention of robbing it.
But the tables were turned dramatically when he found himself overcome by owner Olga Zajac, 28, who happened to be a black belt in karate.
She allegedly floored the would-be robber with a single kick.
Then, in a scene reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, police say Zajac dragged the semi-conscious Jasinski to a back room of the salon and tied him up with a hair dryer cable.
She allegedly stripped him naked and, for the next three days, used him as a sex slave to ‘teach him a lesson’ - force feeding him Viagra to keep the lesson going.
The would-be robber was eventually released, with Zajak saying he had learned his lesson.
A blurred image of Olga Zajac, who allegedly held would-be robber Viktor Jasinski prisoner for 3 days in a back room of her hair salon, where she fed him Viagra and had sex with him “a couple of times”
Jasinski went straight to the police and told them of his back-room ordeal, saying that he had been held hostage, handcuffed naked to a radiator, and fed nothing but Viagra.
Both have now been arrested.
When police arrived to question Zahjac, she said: ‘What a bastard. Yes, we had sex a couple of times. But I bought him new jeans, gave him food and even gave him 1,000 roubles when he left.”
All far too reminiscent of that famous scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction
Update
Thanks to DM reader Tom for posting a link to Kiri Blakely‘s blog on Forbes, which explains that this story is over 2-years-old:
The entire wacky incident happened over two years ago, in April of 2009. Here is the Moscow Times story on it. The story wasn’t exactly underreported, either. Google “sex slave Moscow hair salon” and over 200,000 results come up, all of them dated April 2009.
The Daily Mail also acts like the Russian sex slave incident just happened today. Was there some new news here that would entail [the Daily Mail and Gawker] republishing this two-year-old story? Maybe a trial or sentencing or something? Not from what I can see in either the Gawker or Daily Mail pieces. It’s the same old story—though granted, it’s a good one!
