"On these grounds an encounter with duelling-swords was arranged one early morning in a convenient field. At the third set-to Lieut. D'Hubert found himself lying on his back on the dewy grass with a hole in his side. A serene sun rising over a landscape of meadows and woods hung on his left. A surgeon -- not the flute player, but another -- was bending over him, feeling around the wound."
Source: NY Daily News
Craigslist date with murder for N.Y. beauty Julissa Brisman, model & Internet masseuse shot in hotel
Thursday, April 23rd 2009, 3:31 PM
A gorgeous New York model who doubled as an Int
ernet masseuse was shot dead at a posh Boston hotel - and cops think her killer struck before.
Julissa Brisman, 26, was killed at the plush Marriott Copley Place hotel, apparently by a man who answered her ad on craigslist, police said.
A woman who came to the door of the Brisman family apartment on W. 107th St. said only, "Oh my God, Julissa ... she's dead. It's terrible. We are in pain."
Friends said Brisman's mom, Carmen, repeatedly screamed, "Somebody killed my daughter," when cops notified her. She was in Boston last night to identify the body.
"It's tragic," said Matthew Terhune, 34, a Queens photographer and friend. "It [stinks] that someone so young and so pretty could be killed like that."
The deadly drama unfolded when fellow hotel guests heard screams from her room on the 20th floor of the downtown hotel.
She was found lying in a pool of blood, with several bullet wounds and a plastic "restraint" on one wrist, cops said. A massage table was set up inside the 20th-floor room.
Brisman was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Hotel surveillance video captured images of a young, clean-cut looking man with blond hair whom cops called a suspect.
Cops think the same man robbed a prostitute a few days before at a nearby hotel.
Police don't know if Brisman was selling sex or just rubdowns in the hotel room.
"What we know is that Miss Brisman was advertising masseuse services on craigslist," said Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll.
Pals said Brisman was an aspiring actress who did a public service ad for cell phone safety. She also worked on music videos and other photo shoots, gave her mom part of her earnings and bought school books for her 14-year-old sister.
Photographer Mark Pines, who knew Brisman for six years, insisted she was offering "straight massage, that's all. It was all legit."
He also rejected speculation she died resisting a thief.
"She wouldn't have resisted robbing her. It wasn't in her nature. She would have just given up the money."
"This is a horrible tragedy," he said. "I hope other girls with stars in their eyes learn from this. She was open and trusting, but it led to her death."
Other friends said they didn't know Brisman was working as a masseuse or advertising online.
Toya Mickens, 24, said she only knew that Brisman, whom she called "a very sweet girl," went out of town "all the time."
"I saw her Sunday night after she came home after walking her dog. She was on her way out with her luggage. She said she was going to Boston."
Terhune last saw Brisman in January when she did a sexy photo shoot in a pink bikini for a tanning salon ad campaign.
Brisman, a slim blond with a Playboy bunny tattoo on her hip, told him she had been paid $1,000 to fly out to private parties in Chicago and walk around in a bikini or topless.
"I don't think it went beyond that," Terhune said. "They were just parties where guys wanted to see hot girls."
Alleged 'Craigslist Killer' Philip Markoff pal, Morgan Houston, was shocked by his arrest
Friday, April 24th 2009, 7:07 AM
AIKEN, S.C. — The moment Morgan Houston saw hotel surveillance pictures of the "Craigslist Killer," she recognized her old college pal, Philip Markoff.
The podiatry student had just gotten a call about Markoff's arrest and "started going into shock," she told the Daily News at her family's South Carolina vacation home.
"I ran downstairs. I woke up my mom and said, 'Mom, can you believe this?'" said Houston, who sat next to Markoff at their graduation from SUNY Albany in 2007.
"We turned on the TV, and the pictures from the security — they look like him. Knowing him, especially if you see his profile, it looks like him. It was Phil."
Houston and Markoff had been friends since sophomore year, fellow members of a pre-med fraternity who ran with the same crowd.
She'd had a few uncomfortable run-ins with him.
He had pinned her against a wall one dark night to kiss her — and had to be pulled away. He made lewd comments about her body. And he showed up at a Halloween party dressed as a mammogram machine, offering free breast exams.
Houston, 23, said she had chalked it up to the drunken antics of a socially awkward young man and remained friends and study buddies with Markoff.
Now that she's heard the allegations against her old pal — that he lured escorts to hotel rooms, robbed them at gunpoint and killed one woman — she wonders if she was wrong to blow off his bad behavior.
"If it is true, if this has been an escalation, maybe that ... was coming out then," she said.
Markoff, 22, has been charged with murder, kidnapping and robbery in the slaying of Manhattan masseuse Julissa Brisman, 25, and the stickup of hooker Trisha Leffler, 29, in Boston.
Cops believe he met the women through craigslist and lured them to hotels so he could rob them to finance a gambling addiction.
When Brisman put up a fight, he bashed her in the head and then shot her three times — once through the heart — police said.
"The crimes are atrocious. They are brutal, and I wouldn't have ever expected something like this from him ... that he could lead a double life like this," Houston said.
Their intimates from SUNY Albany are divided about Markoff's guilt.
"Some people are adamant there's no way he could have done this — it's Phil; he couldn't hurt a fly," Houston said.
"And then there's other people that have seen bits and glimpses, and the memories are coming back ... and it is putting doubt in their minds," she said.
"I had really passed that situation out of my mind," she said of the night during sophomore year when the 6-foot preppie overpowered her on the way home from a bar.
Instead, what she recalled most vividly was how anxious Markoff was about his future in his last year at SUNY Albany, as he waited to find out which med schools had accepted him.
"I remember when he was worried about getting into BU. He was so worried. He didn't think he would get in," she said.
"He got in and he was ecstatic; he was so happy about this, and to think that he would risk it, if this is true. ..."
Slain masseuse Julissa Brisman once worked for madam Kristin Davis
Sunday, April 19th 2009, 2:11 AM
worked for madam Kristin Davis
Sunday, April 19th 2009, 2:11 AM
Julissa Brisman was found inside a luxury Boston hotel room Tuesday, her body riddled with bullets.
Roca/News Notorious madam Kristin Davis says that the murdered craigslist masseuse used to work for her.
The gorgeous Manhattan masseuse murdered in Boston by the craigslist killer once worked for one of the city's most notorious madams, the Daily News has learned.
Two years before Julissa Brisman began offering sexy body rubs online, she reported to "Manhattan Madam" Kristin Davis, the busty bottle blond whose black book is said to be one of the largest in the business.
"She was a good kid, but kind of a nightmare," Davis told The News on Saturday. "She had a bad drinking problem. We rescued her a couple of times from a bar where she hung out when she was supposed to be working.
"I kept giving her second chances," the madam added. "She'd come back and promise she was sober."
Brisman's friends say she stopped drinking last year and has been attending AA meetings ever since.
Davis insisted that over the year and a half she booked dates for Brisman, the stunning 26-year-old model used the name "Stacey."
Brisman offered only sensual body rubs and wasn't selling sex, said the madam, on probation for five years after pleading guilty to promoting prostitution and serving three months in jail.
"She didn't do escorting," Davis said.
Brisman's bullet-riddled body was found inside a luxury Boston hotel room Tuesday.
Cops believe Brisman was lured to the Marriott Copley Place hotel by a cold-blooded killer who may have used craigslist to assault two other women.
The suspect, a 6-foot-tall, clean-cut white man with blond hair, was captured on video as he coolly walked through the hotel lobby on the night Brisman was gunned down.
Cops suspect he also tied up and attempted to rob an exotic dancer at gunpoint in a Rhode Island hotel Thursday night. In that attack, the 26-year-old victim was saved when her husband burst into her room at the Holiday Inn Express and the man fled.
The suspect may also have assaulted a Boston hooker last week, before the Brisman slaying; an attack also targeted via craigslist, cops said.
Such craigslist-fueled violence is no surprise to Davis, who said that several young women who offer sexual services online have come to her with tales of horror.
Some online stalkers even impersonate cops and force the women to hand over their cash in the face of "arrest," the former madam said.
"If they hit the girls at the right time," Davis said, "they may come away with $1,000."
JuLissa Brisman's current MySpace profile is private, but back in May of 2008 it was still public. That was when it was indexed by MySpaceProfiles.org [copy of the page here] a site that scans the social network and condenses info from profiles onto a single, shorter web page without all the browser-freezing MySpace "pimpage."
So, in May of last year, Brisman described herself as "A TruE BoRN and RaiSeD ManHaTTan HoTTiE FiNaLLy GeTTin a H0Ld oF ThiS W0nDeRFuL ThiNg We caLL LIFE!!!! : )"
She was also clear about her primary interests:
ACTiNG..I live it..I breathe it-it's my Passion!, FasHion ShowS (and shopping after!!),Broadway Shows,CoNcErTs,I LoVe "SeXy TimEz"~ Hanging out and spoiling my GorGe0uS d0g CoCo ChAnEL!! He's the Man of my life!!oh ya!! lol TraveLing and HavIng Fun absolutly any single place I go ALL oveR the WoRLD!!, dancing, TaNNiNg,WoRkIng OuT, LuVV GoiNg 2 the beaCh, "SERENiTY",Loving to PUNK ppl with mY FriEndZ!! LOL!!HangiNg 0uT w/ my LiL SiS MeLissa!! We are sum CrazY LiL things when 2gether!! Heh,heheh!!, People who don't judge and they are there for you WHEN YOUR LIFE GETS WAAAAY OUT OF HAND!! , My Hilarious FrienDZ & FaM who Laugh At all my TacKy and CorNy Jokes!!! ~ KiSSeS~~
Brisman loved the movies Juno and 40 Year Old Virgin and listed among her favorite books Uta Hagen's Respect for Acting and Challenge for the Actor.
Brisman wrote that her heroes were "Sarah Jessica Parker & Marilyn Monroe," and she quoted Monroe: "I have too many fantasies to be a housewife, I guess I am a fantasy..."
