Ryan Jenkins
Ryan Jenkins and Jasmine Fiore
Ryan Jenkins’ suicide begins with the murder of Jasmine Fiore on August 15, 2009. Fiore had met Canadian-born real estate investor Ryan Jenkins at a Las Vegas Casino shortly after he had completed filming VH1’s reality show Megan Wants a Millionaire.
Two days later, on March 18, 2009, Fiore and Jenkins were married at The Little White Wedding Chapel on the Vegas Strip. Unfortunately with this couple what happens in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas.
In June, 2009, Jenkins was charged in Clark County, Nevada with battery constituting domestic violence for hitting Fiore in the arm. Travis Heinrich, who was one of two suitors of Fiore’s states that Jenkins and Fiore had been arguing over her friendship with Heinrich (who was present) which resulted in Jenkins hitting Fiore’s arm, knocking her into a swimming pool.
Jenkins was scheduled to go to trial in December, but the pair reconciled shortly before Fiore’s death on August 15 and they traveled to San Diego for a poker game.
Fiore’s mother stated that the two fought regularly and that Jenkins knew about Fiore’s ex-boyfriends, but was extremely jealous of them. She also told The Associated Press that her daughter had the marriage annulled in May of 2009. However, no court records of an annulment in Nevada, or LA County, Calif. could be found. An annulment wouldn’t have mattered. These two were destined for bad things.
Jenkins and Fiore checked into the L’Auberge Hotel in Del Mar in the evening of August 13, 2009 for a charity poker tournament. Surveillance video has them leaving the Hilton at about 2:30am on August 14. The couple was seen later at a nightclub in downtown San Diego.
At 4:30am, Jenkins returned to the L’Auberge Hotel alone. Fiore was never seen alive again. Jenkins left the hotel at around 9am on Friday, August 14.
Fiore’s body is discovered, but not identified on Saturday, August 15 at about 7am. Her nude body is badly beaten and crushed into a suitcase inside a dumpster in an alley in Buena Park, Calif. Her teeth and fingers have been removed. She’s been strangled.
On August 18, her remains are identified using the serial numbers from her breast implants. The Orange County Coroner reports that Fiore died a couple of hours prior to when her body was found. They find her white Mercedes abandoned in a parking lot in West Hollywood about a mile from the penthouse she shared with Jenkins in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles.
Everything catches up with Jenkins by 6pm on August 20 when he arrives at the Thunderbird Motel in Hope, British Columbia, Canada with a young blonde woman in a silver PT Cruiser.
Apparently they pay cash for three nights accommodation. The woman stays only 20 minutes and then leaves the hotel and is never seen again. The manager sees Jenkins walking outside the motel the next day, August 21. He looks exhausted and is not even recognizable from his picture seen on television.
At 11:30am on the third day the couple fails to check out, the hotel manager and his nephew decide to check on the room and they find Jenkins hanging from the wall clothing rack by a belt. There’s no suicide note in the hotel but a suicide note is saved on Jenkins’ computer titled “Last Will and Testament” and dated August 20, 2009.
On August 27, investigators found a storage unit full of his belongings, including a suitcase full of clothes in Washington state.
When VH1 discovers Jenkins was connected with the murder of Fiore they cancel Megan Wants Millionaire, drop reruns of past shows from its schedule, remove archived episodes from the iTunes Store and cable video on demand services. When they realize Jenkins had appeared in the third season of I Love Money they also cancel the run of that show.
Several lawsuits are filed between 51 Minds, Collective Intelligence and a Canadian firm, Straightline International, when they discover Jenkins had a record in Canada. As o f 2013, lawsuits are still pending.
Bruce Beresford-Redman
Bruce Beresford-Redman
Bruce Beresford-Redman was a reality show producer and produced Pimp My Ride for MTV and moved up to the Survivor television franchise.
Unfortunately, his illustrious career went on the rocks when he decided to kill his wife in early 2010 while they were staying at a Cancun resort following repeated attempts to reconcile.
He married Mónica Burgos on April 8, 1999 in Brazil. They had two children. On April 8, 2010, Mónica was found dead at the Moon Palace resort in Cancun, Mexico while they were on vacation.
Bruce was detained and questioned by Mexican police later that day as a “person of interest.” He was released in the early morning hours the following day on the condition that he remain in Mexico. Someone at the hotel told police that they had seen the couple arguing on April 4 and Bruce was seen with scratches on his body.
Mexico authorities held on to his passport but that didn’t stop Bruce from illegally leaving Mexico.
On April 9, 2010, The Los Angeles Times reported that Mónica Beresford-Redman had been strangled and her body dumped in a sewer close to where the couple had been vacationing.
On May 31, 2010, Mexico issued an arrest warrant for Bruce Beresford-Redman and because unlike Mexico, the United States honors warrants from other countries, the U.S. Marshalls apprehended Bruce Beresford-Redman on November 2010 in Los Angeles, and held him in custody for Mexico.
On November 29, 2010, a Los Angeles federal judge denied Beresford-Redman bail and on July 12, 2011 U.S. Magistrate Chooljian determined that he should be returned to Mexico because there was enough circumstantial evidence he could have murdered his wife Mónica.
On February 8, 2012 Beresford-Redman waived further appeals and was extradited to Mexico and on February 15 he was ordered to remain in custody pending adjudication.
His children have been taken care of by his parents since his arrest and he talks to them on the phone whenever he can.
Joe Finley
Joe & Linda Finley
On the day he auditioned for America’s Got Talent in 2010, Joe Finley’s wife Laura was found brutally murdered at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where the show was being filmed.
On October 23, while Joe Finley was standing in line waiting for his audition to begin for America’s Got Talent, the police were discovering his wife’s lifeless body on the third floor of a staircase in the hotel.
When he was told of her death, he went ahead and auditioned, barely making it through the song he picked for the audition.
He admitted to police later that he and Laura took ecstasy the night she died and police found some in his possession. He was arrested on drug charge and released on bail.
In July, 2012, Finley brought a wrongful death suit against the Millennium Biltmore Hotel claiming vagrants entered through an unlocked door and attacked his wife while she was getting ice from the hotel ice machine.
In legal documents he claimed the head of security took a gruesome death picture of his wife and disseminated that photo to the general public and that he even flashed the topless death picture of his wife at the hotel bar.
The suit was seeking unspecified damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy.
When her autopsy report was released it disclosed that she had ecstasy and alcohol in her blood. She had a 1-inch laceration on the top of her head and a “diagonal gaping laceration measuring three-and-a-half inches” on her scalp.
Her skull separated from the spinal column during a severe head injury. When found she was in stage four rigor mortis. Her top was in the lost and found and her pants were on her, inside out.
Despite all this, the police have never released the cause of death as an accident, homicide or suicide.
Some of the comments posted on the NBC Los Angeles.com site about Joe Finley suing the Millennium Biltmore Hotel are incredibly voyeuristic and are proof that Reality is Tragedy.
One, from a Nurse Case Manager left on February 27, 2013 claims she was at the hotel at the time of the murder and “there is no doubt in my mind I saw the murderer at the elevator shortly before he killed her.” She goes on to say that the police are not listening to her and that they screwed up the investigation by looking at Joe Finley and not looking for the man who actually killed her.
The one posted beneath hers dated March 20, 2013 from Mitchell Timothy Finn states he is Joe Finley’s brother, or rather he was his brother until he figured out what he did to Laura and that he (Joe) is a sociopath.
The one posted beneath his is from Jill Sutterlin. It states she is Laura’s sister and she states her family is working very closely with the LAPD and that Joe not only lied but refuses to help the LAPD but has found time to only “try and collect money from the Biltmore, get married and have a baby.” She goes on to say that the video and pictures the LAPD have disproves everything the Nurse Case Manager is saying and Joe Finley’s story as well.
Gabriel Ben-Meir
Gabriel Ben-Meir was a 30-year old music producer who coordinated music for MTV shows including Punk’d.
In May, 2011, he was brutally shot in the back of the head and his wallet was taken by two robbers. He was just a block away from his home in Los Angeles and steps away from his parked car.
A year later, a man and woman were charged and ordered to stand trial on murder charged in Ben-Meir’s death and the unrelated murder of Marcelo Aragon who was killed in April of 2011.
Ryan Dunn
Ryan Dunn
Ryan Dunn was an actor, stunt man, and a a member of the Jackass and Viva La Bam crew.
He came to prominence as a member of the CKY Crew along with his long-time friend Bam Margera for their over-the-top pranks and stunts which they recorded on camera. This in turn led to the rise of MTV’s Jackass and the three feature films which have all been commercial successes.
Aside from Jackass, Dunn hosted Homewrecker and Proving Ground and appeared in Street Dreams, Blonde Ambition, Haggard: the Movie and Minghags: The Movie.
On June 20, 2011, along with his friend Zachary Hartwell, a production assistant on Jackass Number Two, Dunn died in an alcohol-related car accident in Chester County, Penn.
Police stated it was the worst crash they had ever seen, stating Dunn was traveling over 130mph in his Porsche before the crash. The autopsy results revealed that the crash was so violent it was impossible to determine if Dunn and his friend died from the impacty or from the fire that resulted from it.
Phil Harris
Phillip Charles (Phil) Harris 12/19/56-2/9/10) was captain and part owner of the Cornelia Marie, a crabbing vessel which was featured on Discovery Channel‘s reality TV series Deadliest Catch.
Harris had been fishing with his father since he was 8 and after high school he began crab fishing. By the time he was 21 he was one of the youngest captains of a crab fishing boat on the Bering Sea. At the time of his death, he had been the captain of the Cornelia Marie for more than 20 years.
On January 29, 2010 he suffered a massive stroke while offloading crab in port at St. Paul Island, Alaska. Despite improvement in his health, Capt. Harris died on February 2, 201 at the age of 53. He had a pulmonary embolism while in the hospital.
Discovery Channel aired the Captain’s death on July 20, 2010 which they followed with a special tribute episode.
Shain Gandee
One of MTV’s Buckwild reality show stars, Shain Gandee was only 21 when he died. He was one of 9 cast members of the show that follows a group of young adults trying to have fun in Sissonville, West Virginia.
The group pulls stunts such as turning a dump truck into a swimming pool or just riding around the wood on their ATVs.
Gandee was billed as a former high school prom king who had held every job from coal miner to garbage man.
Prior to finding him and two others dead, family members had reported him missing in Kanawha County, West Virginia along with a 1984 Ford Bronco belonging to the family.
When found, the Sheriff’s Office said the vehicle was partially submerged in mud. It was uneven but upright; its muffler below the surface. Mud covered the lower part of the Bronco’s passenger side door, but the driver’s side, where the younger Gandee sat, was free.
Gandee’s uncle, David Dwight Gandee, 48 and Donald Robert Myers, 27 were the two people found dead with Shain Gandee.
Autopsy results confirmed they died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Anna Nicole Smith
Smith, who exposed her bizarre life on The Anna Nicole Show, was found dead of “combined drug intoxication” at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Florida in February 2007.
If you really know nothing about her and how reality TV affected her life, google her name and start reading.
Small Screen Silver Surfer 