Source: Torontosun.com.
CANADA – In the rough trade she inhabited in the twilight, the attractive Frenchwoman called herself Mistress Hilda Pierce.
By day, she was Nadia Frey, 58, lovely, charming and with Gaulic sex appeal to burn.
It was the former that got her killed — and with her went a treasure trove of secrets. Secrets that detectives believed bore the kinky proclivities of the rich and famous.
On Saturday, July 26, 1997, she was discovered in her seventh-floor lair on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The dominatrix had been shot twice in the chest, once in the neck and for good measure, she had been shot in the head.
“She was a very nice lady, a cultured lady,” one neighbour said, adding that Frey had immigrated from France in the 1960s.
Her body was discovered by her daughter Sheva who also worked as a dominatrix and prostitute in Las Vegas.
“It could have been a customer, it could have been a crime of opportunity, or it could have been a competitor,” NYPD homicide chief of detectives Kevin Farrell told the New York Daily News three days after the slaying.
Farrell noted the wide array of sex toys and bondage gear in the apartment, which was painted black and gold with dungeon-like bars. There was also a spinning wheel, crucifixion device. Her black chow chow — who, like his master wore a Star of David medallion — had been locked in the bathroom.
He added: “It appears that Ms. Frey was involved in a commercial enterprise that involved a kind of bondage.”
Police sources told the New York tabloids that her clientele “were very well-to-do people.”
Frey advertised her services in various sex magazines, featuring a photo of herself in a leather teddy with a man’s head between her large breasts. She intoned to wannabe bad boys: “Submit to the European Goddess!”
It added: “Novice, experienced and crossdressers welcome!”
But there was a downside to the BDSM business: She had been arrested three times for prostitution.
And one customer told the News that Frey was lax when it came to security. The reason? Frey had fallen back into a cocaine addiction that had previously plagued her.
“You could just call her and she’d let you in,” the man said. “To be quite honest, I thought that was a bit risky.”
Cops were now hunting a killer and they began scouring her little black book for leads. One of the names in the book was famed sportscaster Marv Albert, although cops later said he had nothing to do with the murder.
Detectives said there were no signs of forced entry but … there were pages missing from the black book and investigators surmised that one of those missing pages contained the killer’s name.
A source told the New York Post that in addition to Marv Albert, the address book included judges, politicians and at least one police inspector.
But the spotlight was on the famed sportscaster, who later told Barbara Walters he had never been into S&M. Yet a former girlfriend revealed that she met Frey when Albert was orchestrating a threesome. Albert’s flack called the claim an “atrocious lie.”
Frey’s cocaine relapse was also causing problems for homicide detectives desperate to close the case. After her relapse, the $150-an-hour sex worker opened her doors to all — making the suspect pool much larger.
There were at least 75 names in her client book and police sources said she had recently been threatened and believed one client had roofied her.
“There are too many possibilities,” one detective told the Daily News.
“The biggest problem here is that in the last six to eight months of her life she slipped back heavily into cocaine use, therefore a lot of the safeguards she used to protect herself were gone. She allowed a lot of unsavoury people into her apartment, people she would not have let in when she was sober.”
Six months after Frey’s shocking murder, cops were approximately stuck in Nowheresville and the investigation was in neutral.
One homicide detective said: “I wouldn’t say it’s at a dead end but it’s moving along very slowly.”
By early 1998, the stories about the tragic demise of Nadia Frey had disappeared from the headlines.
Five years later, while I was working for the Post, my editors asked me to look into any potential follow-ups on the mystery.
Despite chasing leads in New York, Florida, Las Vegas and Gallup, New Mexico, where her daughter moved after the murder, there was little to report on.
Two decades later, the slaying of Nadia Frey remains in the same lonely place it was in July 1997.
