Slain Artist Recalled as Creative, Inspiring

The day after Kathleen Anne Hirsch-Jolly was shot to death last week in her Tarzana home, her best friend received a ghoulish e-mail.

It was from Craig Aric Jensen, the ex-boyfriend of the Beverly Hills-raised artist known as Katt Jolly. In the “subject” heading, Jensen had typed: “Get some new friends.”

The chilling message continued: “Hi Sherri. Kathleen Anne Hirsch is dead. . . . I loved her and I can’t stand the thought of another man being with her. So I have made sure no other man can have her.”

Jensen had sent the e-mail on a time-delayed basis, so it arrived well after he had killed Jolly, 42, on Valentine’s Day morning, then fatally shot himself in the head.

The shooting claimed the life of a free-spirited artist whom friends and family members described this week as beautiful, creative and inspiring.

“She was the flower child I wanted to be,” her stepmother, Elizabeth Hirsch, said Wednesday as she sat in a Canoga Park mortuary not far from Jolly’s white casket. “When she was in her ‘up mood,’ you just wanted to be close to her. When she was down, she suffered such depths.”

At age 7, Jolly began taking fine-art classes at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She went on to study at the Parsons School of Design in Paris, the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

She specialized in rug designs and matching china, graphics and wall art for public areas of hotels, including the Beverly Hills Hotel and Hyatt Carlton Towers in London.

“She was a really incredible artist,” said Debbie Vasquez, who became a friend of Jolly after visiting her Ventura Boulevard studio.

The mortuary was decorated this week with Jolly’s work: several large framed paintings and dozens of greeting cards and drawings. All were full of bright colors.

Jolly, who was married twice, had broken up with Jensen more than a year ago after a yearlong relationship.

“Katt wanted more from a man,” said her brother, Anthony Hirsch. “She wanted a man with more ambition, more initiative. [Jensen] was not a guy to take the bull by the horns.”

But family and friends said Jensen, 36, whom police found in Jolly’s bedroom closet with a bullet in his head, was obsessed with the artist. They said Jensen stalked her, but she did not take it seriously.

“She just kind of laughed it off, like it was nothing,” said Jan Smith, a friend of 15 years.

Even on the fateful morning when Jensen, an aspiring guitarist, pulled a gun on Jolly, she did not seem worried, family members said, based on what the only eyewitness to her killing told them.

She had been remodeling her two-story house on Rosita Street. A handyman arrived about 9 a.m. and Jolly let him in, unaware that Jensen was already in the house.

Jensen appeared, pulled two guns out of his guitar case and ordered the handyman to sit down. He then pointed the guns at his ex-girlfriend.

Jolly asked Jensen several times what he was doing in the house, according to relatives. Then he shot her several times.

“Mr. Milquetoast, Mr. Agreeable, Mr. Leech, that’s what he was,” said Helen Hirsch, Jolly’s mother. “He snuffed out a very important, creative life. A mother. A daughter. A sister. My daughter. How dare he?”

Anthony Hirsch flew in from his home in Indonesia to attend Wednesday evening’s viewing and Thursday’s funeral.

“I was writing my sister’s eulogy,” he said of the 20-hour flight. “Every time I wrote down one sentence, I’d break down. And all these other passengers are staring at me.”

Hirsch talked about his sister’s beauty.

“She would walk into a room--with that face, that red hair--she’d walk by and men would break their necks,” he said.

Later, Jolly’s only child, 18-year-old Michelle, arrived at the mortuary. She had told family members she wanted to view her mother at sunset, so at that time the chapel was cleared and she went in alone.

Several minutes later, Michelle emerged, clutching a pink rose. There were no tears. Just a dreamy, far-off look and a smile.