Mystery swirls around Penthouse model's death

In 1975, Anneka Vasta was the Penthouse Pet of the Year. But on Jan. 4, joggers found Vasta's nude, dead body washed up on the shores of Camp Pendleton, the major Marine Corps base near San Diego. She was still so slim and youthful looking, the San Diego Union Tribune reports, that military police thought she was a teenager.

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The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is now asking anyone who has information about Vasta's death or saw her before her body was found to contact them. She had a broken neck and back, and police have yet to determine whether she was the victim of accidental drowning or committed suicide. Her family has "vehemently denied" she would have killed herself, the Union Tribune reports.

Her car was found parked on a viewpoint 60 feet above the Pacific Ocean, and the Union Tribune reports that a bloody bra and blouse, as well as a blood-stained steak knife, were found in the car.

Vasta used the name Anneka Di Lorenzo in her modeling days. She also played Messalina in Penthouse founder Bob Guccione's infamous 1979 movie "Caligula," the first movie to feature major stars in a film with explicit sex scenes. The film is famous as one of the only films critic Roger Ebert walked out of. Ebert later awarded it zero stars and described the movie as "sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash."

Vasta once dated Guccione, but in 1990, she won a $4 million lawsuit against him, claiming he compelled her to have sex with two of his business associates, the New York Times reports.

She was born Marjorie Thoreson in Minnesota, but left there at just 14 for Los Angeles.

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Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45050978/ns/today-entertainment/

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