Here’s another issue of The Exploiter, from today in 1971. First off—and you’ll want to be sitting down for this—there’s no such thing as an orgy inspector. The story is actually about Ken Russell’s movie The Devils, and consists of stills from the set along with quotes stolen from interviews in better magazines. And concerning the Raquel Welch item, that story is about a movie too—her 1967 French comedy Les plus vieux métier du monde, aka The Oldest Profession. Inside The Exploiter you get more of the same cockteasing, including a story about Sharon Tate. But just when we were about to pronounce this issue a total loss, we reached a story entitled “Girl Killer Escapes from Prison.”
Apparently, in 1969 an eighteen-year-old girl named Margo Freshwater was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of a Tennessee man named Hillman Robbins, Sr. He’d been shot five times in the head by Freshwater’s boyfriend as she stood by and watched. But not long after she was sent to the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville, Freshwater
escaped (supposedly by sexually servicing the guards, but we take that with a grain of salt considering the highly dubious source). The Exploiter’s coverage ends there, like an old-fashioned cliffhanger: we know that Freshwater is at large, and that she achieved it by (maybe) blowing some guards.
escaped (supposedly by sexually servicing the guards, but we take that with a grain of salt considering the highly dubious source). The Exploiter’s coverage ends there, like an old-fashioned cliffhanger: we know that Freshwater is at large, and that she achieved it by (maybe) blowing some guards.Well, we were curious, so we used a handy new research tool called the Interweb—you may have heard of it—and discovered that, amazingly, Freshwater remained at large, established a new life as a model citizen, married, had children and even became a grandmother. Authorities finally tracked her down in 2002, arrested her in front of her shocked family, and sent her back to the same Tennessee prison from which she had escaped. In July of 2009 she was denied a new trial for the third time, and unless she gets a chance to face a jury and prove she was nothing more than a helpless witness to her boyfriend’s crime, it looks like she’ll be spending the rest of her life in jail.
So the lesson here is even the lowest rent tabloid—and The Exploiter is as low as they get—is worth reading from cover to cover because you never know what enlightening historical tidbits might be tucked inside. Oh, and crime doesn’t pay. That’s a lesson too. Well, it doesn’t pay unless you’re clever. Then you can get away with almost anything. Also, if you’re rich. You can pretty much call your own shots if you’re rich. Unless you screw a person or entity even richer than you. Then you might actually go to jail. But if you do, a blowjob or two can (allegedly) get you out. But only (we assume) if you’re really good at it. If the moral complexity of all this is tiring, feel free to soothe your weary soul with a better version below of the Welch shot from The Exploiter’s cover. So Sunday isn’t a total loss.
