little people. As in dwarfs.
I scrolled through photos of the little ladies, all dressed in evening gowns and having cocktails with the little bachelor, a guy by the name of Gary Ellstrom.
I looked at his photo. Gary had the typical features and body type associated with achondroplasia dwarfism—an elongated forehead and average-sized torso, coupled with shortened limbs. He had dark hair, dark eyes and wore a sparse mustache on his upper lip.
I wrote the info down on a post-it (pink and shaped like a heart), before moving on to the next show on my list: Don & Deb’s Diva Dozen .
Anyone who hadn’t been living under a rock for the past year knew Don and Deb Davenport. They were the parents of 12 children: two sets of triplets (ages six and ten) and a set of sextuplets (four-year-olds). Which in itself was enough to become reality show royalty, but Don and Deb took their fame one step further—all twelve of their children competed on the Tiny Tot beauty pageant circuit. They were in their fourth season, and the ratings just kept climbing.
Though, in all fairness, some of the recent rating hikes had been due more to Don and Deb’s personal life than their children’s painted faces and fluffy-pink costumes.
Deb’s close-cropped hairdo had been plastered all over the tabloids recently (including our fair paper), ever since Don had been photographed with a string of young co-eds at trendy Hollywood nightclubs. Rumor was he’d had an affair, but no one had ever come forward claiming she was the other woman. At the beginning of last season the couple had announced a trial separation. Deb took the sextuplets, doing the Southern Glitz pageant circuit, and Don took the triplets, doing the West Coast Sunshine pageants. The separation had lasted right up until sweeps week, when the couple announced they were going to give marriage a try again. The season had culminated in an hour-long Don & Deb’s Reunion show where the couple took all twelve children to Vegas for a long weekend, renewing their vows at the MGM Grand.
I wrote down Don and Deb’s names, along with their dozen (Dorri, Diana, Delilah, Dolly, Daria, Donna, Daphne, Deirdre, Destiny, Dominique, Demitra, and Drea), though I doubted we were looking at a Tiny Tot killer.
Last on my list was the show that had put Chester’s name on the map in the first place— Stayin’ Alive . Currently in its ninth season, Stayin’ Alive was the granddaddy of all reality shows, pitting fifteen strangers against each other to fight for the title of Last Survivor Alive. Each season, Chester dropped the contestants in the middle of nowhere, the only location requirements being a beach (where the female contestants could wear their teeny tiny bikinis), torrential rains (that wetted said bikinis suggestively), and lots of big, hungry mosquitoes (just for kicks). This season was Stayin’ Alive: Tonga , and each week all fifteen contestants would brave both the elements and each other, fighting it out in reward and immunity challenges. Anyone who did not win immunity was forced to go to the tribal staging area, where someone was sent home each week. However, they weren’t voted out on their survival skills. Instead, the contestant participated in a dance-off, where a panel of judges voted out the contestant with the worst ballroom skills. We were three weeks from the end of the season, which meant the contestants still had to dance the cha-cha, the tango and, the grand finale, the Venetian waltz.
While I figured none of the contestants likely had much contact with Barker—being that he was killed here and not in Tonga—the three judges had been with him since the beginning of the show, giving them plenty of time to build up a grudge. Damon Crow, a record producer from Detroit, was the first, a big guy who tended to phrase his critiques of the contestants with so much slang they needed urban dictionaries to decipher his meaning. Mitzy Reed was
I scrolled through photos of the little ladies, all dressed in evening gowns and having cocktails with the little bachelor, a guy by the name of Gary Ellstrom.
I looked at his photo. Gary had the typical features and body type associated with achondroplasia dwarfism—an elongated forehead and average-sized torso, coupled with shortened limbs. He had dark hair, dark eyes and wore a sparse mustache on his upper lip.
I wrote the info down on a post-it (pink and shaped like a heart), before moving on to the next show on my list: Don & Deb’s Diva Dozen .
Anyone who hadn’t been living under a rock for the past year knew Don and Deb Davenport. They were the parents of 12 children: two sets of triplets (ages six and ten) and a set of sextuplets (four-year-olds). Which in itself was enough to become reality show royalty, but Don and Deb took their fame one step further—all twelve of their children competed on the Tiny Tot beauty pageant circuit. They were in their fourth season, and the ratings just kept climbing.
Though, in all fairness, some of the recent rating hikes had been due more to Don and Deb’s personal life than their children’s painted faces and fluffy-pink costumes.
Deb’s close-cropped hairdo had been plastered all over the tabloids recently (including our fair paper), ever since Don had been photographed with a string of young co-eds at trendy Hollywood nightclubs. Rumor was he’d had an affair, but no one had ever come forward claiming she was the other woman. At the beginning of last season the couple had announced a trial separation. Deb took the sextuplets, doing the Southern Glitz pageant circuit, and Don took the triplets, doing the West Coast Sunshine pageants. The separation had lasted right up until sweeps week, when the couple announced they were going to give marriage a try again. The season had culminated in an hour-long Don & Deb’s Reunion show where the couple took all twelve children to Vegas for a long weekend, renewing their vows at the MGM Grand.
I wrote down Don and Deb’s names, along with their dozen (Dorri, Diana, Delilah, Dolly, Daria, Donna, Daphne, Deirdre, Destiny, Dominique, Demitra, and Drea), though I doubted we were looking at a Tiny Tot killer.
Last on my list was the show that had put Chester’s name on the map in the first place— Stayin’ Alive . Currently in its ninth season, Stayin’ Alive was the granddaddy of all reality shows, pitting fifteen strangers against each other to fight for the title of Last Survivor Alive. Each season, Chester dropped the contestants in the middle of nowhere, the only location requirements being a beach (where the female contestants could wear their teeny tiny bikinis), torrential rains (that wetted said bikinis suggestively), and lots of big, hungry mosquitoes (just for kicks). This season was Stayin’ Alive: Tonga , and each week all fifteen contestants would brave both the elements and each other, fighting it out in reward and immunity challenges. Anyone who did not win immunity was forced to go to the tribal staging area, where someone was sent home each week. However, they weren’t voted out on their survival skills. Instead, the contestant participated in a dance-off, where a panel of judges voted out the contestant with the worst ballroom skills. We were three weeks from the end of the season, which meant the contestants still had to dance the cha-cha, the tango and, the grand finale, the Venetian waltz.
While I figured none of the contestants likely had much contact with Barker—being that he was killed here and not in Tonga—the three judges had been with him since the beginning of the show, giving them plenty of time to build up a grudge. Damon Crow, a record producer from Detroit, was the first, a big guy who tended to phrase his critiques of the contestants with so much slang they needed urban dictionaries to decipher his meaning. Mitzy Reed was
Similar Books
