Making Models Aware of the Risks
What’s especially galling is how excited she probably was, how hopeful. Maybe this was the break she’d been waiting for, the one-in-a-million shot to get into show business. The man probably told her how striking she was, how the camera loved her, how she had “the look.”
Kristine Johnson wasn’t the first pretty girl to fall for a killer’s line. Nor will she be the last vulnerable, overly trusting young woman to mistake a predator’s blood lust for genuine professional interest.
That, apparently, is how she met her end. Hikers found the body Monday of the 21-year-old Santa Monica College student, hands bound and at the bottom of a ravine in the Hollywood Hills. When last seen two weeks earlier, Johnson had told a roommate she was meeting a photographer for a possible feature film role.
Johnson’s killing was a subject of conversation Tuesday morning at the Brand Talent & Modeling Agency in Santa Ana. It’s not that the kidnap-murder of models is an ongoing threat; it’s just that people in the business of beauty and glamour know that some unsavory characters lurk outside the boundaries of the legitimate trade.
“The first thing I thought of was, ‘Do I know her?’ ” says agency owner Patty Brand. “And the second thing was that it just broke my heart.”
Johnson’s death hit home because Linda Sobek, a model killed by a photographer in 1995, had been a Brand client. Brand’s staff had “bad vibes” about the man eventually charged with killing Sobek and wouldn’t refer clients to him. Sobek had met him before and accepted his job offer on her own.
Brand founded her agency 17 years ago and now sends clients nationwide. Her staff doesn’t belabor the potential dangers with female clients, she says, but makes them aware. “It really depends how it’s brought up,” Brand says. “We make sure they stay within the guidelines we set up ... and that they’re to run everything by us. For the most part, they understand [about the dangers], but we reiterate it so we can have a good conscience about it.”
Brand represents males and females, young and old. The freedom, the travel, the opportunity and the glamour remain powerful lures for attractive people, and sometimes they decide they can find work on their own and bypass an agency that takes a commission.
The prospect of instant “discovery” still decorates the modeling business. Brand herself occasionally sees the “look” while passing someone in public. When she does, she hands the person her business card -- still a potential passport to the promised land.
No young woman, she says, should go anywhere with someone claiming to be a photographer. Even when her agency sends models on approved photo shoots, it suggests the model take a friend along. It’s why her agency screens all of its photographers, advertising agents or independent casting directors looking for models.
Common sense, of course, should tell young women not to put themselves in threatening situations. But bad judgment isn’t limited to beautiful young women, and when mixed with the lure of fame and fortune, it can be even more blinding.
“I guess people get stars in their eyes, and sometimes they throw caution to the wind, thinking they’re going to be made a star,” Brand says. “That overcomes their sensible voice.”
The killing of an aspiring actress makes front-page news because it is so rare.
A hope, Brand says, is that the publicity may “get people smart again” about the danger, however remote.
But human nature being what it is, however, someone down the line will forget. They can only hope that the one-in-a-million shot -- that they’ve run into a killer -- won’t come true.
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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons @latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
