Dr. Laura's Mother Found Murdered...

...6 years ago this December

After decomposing several months, Yolanda Schlessinger's corpse was beyond an accurate conclusion for the cause of death, of course, heart "disease" was a part of it.

The first officials to observe the body at the Beverly Hills condo had no doubt it was a murder scene. The headlines were appropriately brutal.

Dr. Laura's Mother Found Murdered

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2002
CBS News:
"The body of Yolanda Schlessinger, 77, was found Monday in her Beverly Hills condominium. Police would say only she had been dead for a long time." [... when found December 16, 2002. "She had apparently been dead about two months, making it hard to determine injuries or trauma."]

City of Beverly Hills December 18, 2002

"On December 18, 2002, an autopsy was conducted by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office. The autopsy disclosed that the deceased was a homicide victim."

Almost as chilling as abandoning her mother was Laura's continued lack of sanctity and respect in the following update:
"*** 1/2 UPDATE: The body of Yolanda Schlessinger sat in the Los Angeles morgue for 10 extra days before her daughter Laura claimed the 77-year-old woman's remains on December 28."
10 extra days...

Laura managed to keep the Yolanda Ceccovini Schlessinger story about a shocked grief ridden Laura. After years [20 years?] of abandoning a mentally troubled parent, Laura claimed she was "overwhelmed by sadness". Laura also claimed she is a licensed psychotherapist, marriage and family therapist. She can't stop claiming she is licensed. Her associates and advertisers don't care for the gullible or ethics and she gets by with that also.

Where's the license?

It seems her ancient MFCC, Marriage, Family and Child Counselor, was abandoned long ago. She has no active license, she's a fraud. It appears she has major unresolved abandonment, as well as chronic lying and low self-esteem issues.

Old people die sad and alone in a society like Laura Schlessinger's ilk create.
[YOLANDA]

Yolanda, Lundy [as she preferred], is an icon in her own rite. She represents the treatment of the mentally troubled and the deadly consequences when society trusts charlatan posers and frauds like Dr.John Romulus Brinkley, radio history or Laura Schlessinger.

Lundy Schlessinger's story is intriguing and important. I hope to find more time for Lundy Schlessinger and other abandoned and mentally impaired that suffer and die from neglect and/or murder.

Laura's role model example: "Just ditch those difficult parents"
Alone at the End Excerpts...

I bet Laura does want to smack a few parents...

Laura Schlessinger: Dr. Laura's Mother Found Murdered2

Mother of ‘Dr. Laura’ Found Dead
By Jill Leovy and Mitchell Landsberg
December 21, 2002 in print edition B-1

Excerpts from the LA Times:
Neighbors said they had last seen Yolanda Schlessinger, 77, in September.
[3-4 months]

In a 1994 People magazine profile, Schlessinger said the estrangement dated to 1986, when her mother walked off the job as Laura’s secretary.

Neighbors described Yolanda Schlessinger as a friendly, pleasant, talkative person who seemed “quite bright,” said Edna Neidorff, a former resident of the apartment complex in the 400 block of North Palm Drive.

Neidorff said the victim was chatty with neighbors. They called her “Lundy,” the name she listed on the condo roster.

Licia Masi lived in the same building as Yolanda Schlessinger. Masi said that earlier this week, her daughter, a building manager, had called police to check on Schlessinger.

The case presents detectives with difficulties because so much time has passed, Gilmond said.

Although not a professionally trained psychotherapist, “Dr. Laura”

She has publicly acknowledged on numerous occasions that she has been estranged from her mother, who she said was “Sophia Loren-like,” since sometime in the mid-1980s.

She has said her parents fought constantly, and her father was physically and emotionally abusive.

In her show, Schlessinger frequently draws a distinction between good and bad mothers. The theme is so typical of her that she and her fans wear shirts emblazoned with “I Am My Kid’s Mom.”

Masi, the building manager’s mother, said Yolanda Schlessinger was a charming, very conversational person, who spoke English as well as Italian and dressed very elegantly.

Although she believed the blond, blue-eyed Schlessinger was in her 70s, Masi said the woman looked much younger and had a youthful, jovial manner.

“It’s so strange that she had no visitors,” Masi said. She said Schlessinger never mentioned her famous daughter.

Neidorff described her acquaintance, Schlessinger, as a “lovely lady” who seemed “very wise.”

“She was very friendly,” she said.

“But very private – an interesting combination. She had an accent that someone told me was Italian

Alone at the End

Long Estranged from Her Daughter, Dr. Laura's Mother Dies Mysteriously

By Alex Tresniowski

Excerpts:

Lundy never even met Deryk, Laura's 17-year-old son with second husband Lew Bishop, a retired professor of biology at USC. In recent years

Laura claims to have lost track of
Lundy altogether

Yet Shelley Herman, a television writer who worked with Laura in the '80s, says Laura "could have found her mother if she wanted to. Why did she have to die alone?" She remembers Lundy as a cheerful assistant who was inexplicably cut off by her daughter. "It's interesting that Laura is always bad-mouthing her mother," says Herman, "but Lundy never said a word about her to the press."

Whatever issues kept them apart will now, sadly, remain unresolved. In her last years

Lundy liked to dress in tasteful St. John outfits and occasionally drive her Cadillac to local bridge clubs. According to someone who spent time with her recently, she also listened to her daughter's radio show. "It just breaks my heart to think of her so alone," says Marcovitch.

"It's everyone's nightmare to die without
your loved ones."

Thou shalt honor
father and mother

Dr. Laura's Mother Found Murdered...

Dr. Laura's Mother Found Murdered3

Is She Dr. Laura or Dr. Strange Love?

Some family values. Your 77-year-old mother lies dead and decomposing
for two months in a condominium not far from the radio complex where
you sternly hector millions about how to live a moral life while
attacking those who "deviate."

And you never bothered once to inquire how your own mom was doing? Maybe
send a minion over to knock on the door once in a while? For two months,
the mail piled up, the condo fees went unpaid, and you, successful
syndicated radio advice guru "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger, never noticed
these and other worrying signs that, as the police suggested, your
mother may have been murdered?

Of course, when you finally found out, after the building manager called
the police, you were "horrified by the tragic circumstances" of her
death.

But was it really appropriate to add, self-servingly, that she "died as
she chose to live, alone and isolated." You said, "My mother shut all
her family out of her life over the years, though we made several futile
attempts to stay connected."

Those are not kind words to speak of one's dead mother. Ties it all in a
neat little bow, doesn't it? Italian-born Yolanda Schlessinger was
"Sophia Loren-like," and you found her difficult. In a 1998 interview,
you claim a childhood "that would curl your hair."

Welcome to reality: Good family values don't come easily. Problem is,
you've made it sound as if they do. You are one of the leading
conservative sloganeers who arrogantly claim a lock on the moral high
ground while deriding those, such as homosexuals, who dare to "deviate"
from your "norm." Using the title "doctor," earned in physiology rather
than medicine or psychology, has lent a false credibility to your
depictions of homosexuality as a "biological error," a "dysfunction" and
a "deviancy" -- words that encourage hate crimes.

Worse, honoring and caring for one's parents is at the heart of your
philosophy, as spelled out in your own presumptuous 1998 book, "The 10
Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life." You
wrote: "God's commandment of honoring parents is basically the message
that parents are a conduit of God. Any profanity or harm to the parent
is as if we've profaned God."

You wrote, "By honoring our parents, we learn to honor God. By honoring
God we become decent human beings."

You obviously failed that test. "Even bad parents deserve to be honored
if only at a minimal level," you wrote. Thus surely "honor thy father
and thy mother" intends something more than letting a septuagenarian
woman go months at a time without even a drive-by visit from her
daughter.

You also wrote: "There is often a profound unwillingness to give
anything to a parent perceived as being unloving or undeserving.... That
avoidance is part of the mentality that says, 'If it doesn't obviously
serve me, I won't do it and I shouldn't have to!' " Apparently, that is
your mentality.

But you, whose shallow perceptions are laced with bursts of meanness and
contempt for others, will no doubt continue as a hot media product and a
darling of the religious conservatives. "A positive voice for positive
values without equal in our time," gushed the Rev. Robert Schuller.

What can we draw from all this? That family relationships are
exceedingly complicated and often painful. That maintaining true "family
values" is not a matter simply of attending church, being heterosexual
and mouthing platitudes, but demands humility, resiliency and deep
compassion. That religious texts like the Bible can provide inspiring
lessons in the hands of sincere teachers and also can be used as clubs
by the cynical and ambitious.

And finally, that the "Dr. Laura" show typifies the dangerous hypocrisy of those who build profitable and politically potent empires on the basis of claiming a monopoly on simplistic answers to complex problems.
The guilt and shame they induce in those who might resist their nostrums
is loathsome, made more so when they themselves so casually ignore them.
[]
Yolanda Schlessinger...