Venus Passing: Anneka Di Lorenzo

Triple P was sad to hear of the death of one of his favourite Penthouse Pets from the seventies Anneka Di Lorenzo.  Although she died in January this year the Naval Criminal Investigative Service has only recently (late last month) launched an appeal for information about her death.

Anneka Vasta

The fifty-eight year old, now known as Anneka Vasta, was found drowned on a beach with a broken neck and back close to Camp Pendleton in San Diego.  Investigators had trouble identifying her as her body was so youthful they initially thought that she was a teenager.  Her car was found on top of some sixty foot cliffs a mile away, parked after she had driven down from Los Angeles where she lived. The authorities do not have enough evidence to tell whether it was suicide (there were cuts on her wrists consistent with a half-hearted suicide attempt) or foul play.

She had been mentally fragile for some years, according to her sister, but her family do not believe she would actually have committed suicide and are worried that someone preyed on the friendly and trusting woman.

Anneka doing publicity work for Caligula in 1980

 

Anneka was born Marjorie Lee Thoreson in St Paul, Minnesota on August 25th 1952. She left school at the age of 14 and moved to California. She changed her name to Anneka Di Lorenzo and did a number of odd jobs becoming a nude dancer at a club. She saw Bob Guccione on TV and sent him some pictures of herself. He signed her up to be Penthouse Pet of the Month for September 1973 in a shoot photographed by Guccione himself in London. She became Pet of the Year for 1975 and was very visible in his film, Caligula (1979). She had small parts in other films too. Later she sued Guccione for $4 million for sexual harrasment and was awarded $4,060,000 damages but she only recived the $60,000 as Guccione appealed and won. She moved to Florida and married Philip Vasta.  They divorced and she moved back to California. She leaves a daughter in her twenties.

We will do a proper appreciation of her in the future, probably as Centrefold of the Month, which won't be until next September.

The NCIS case on Anneka Vasta remains open.  A sad end for such a beauty.