Crystal Hefner has revealed that her late husband, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, had camera peepholes in his bedroom and even in the foot of his bed — where he says he recorded sexual encounters with celebrities and high-ranking politicians, apparently without their knowledge.
Crystal says that she discovered the “little spy holes” in Hef’s bedroom at the famed Playboy Mansion, and when she asked Hugh about them, “he just shrugged,” according to the New York Post.
Hugh Hefner arrives at London Airport with an entourage of Playboy Bunnies, 26th June 1966. (Ted West/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
“‘But what are they for?” Crystal Hefner says she asked Hef.
“I used to do a lot of filming,” he reportedly told her. “VHS. I had hours of video, hundreds of sexy tapes.”
The revelation is part of Hefner’s upcoming tell-all book, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, which is due out on January 23.
Crystal says she also asked her husband if all the celebrities knew he was recording them.
“It’s my bedroom. My house,” he replied, as if that gave him license.
In the book, Hefner adds that Hef, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 91, claimed to have tapes of numerous A-list celebrities and “videos of wild orgies, also with celebrities and politicians and business leaders, some of whom were married.”
Bill Maher and Hugh Hefner on the set of ABC’s “Politically Incorrect.” (Mitchell Haaseth/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
“I think [the cameras] were out of commission by the time I got there, but there… were these carved wood panels. And one of the panels on the right had a circular cutout,” she said according to the Post.
It has not been reported what Hef did with all those videos, and news outlets have not noted if Crystal mentions the fate of the footage in her book.
Crystal was Hefner’s third wife and was only 26 when she married the Playboy founder, aged 86, in 2012. She was with him until his death in 2017.
Hefner says she first met the magazine publisher when she was a 21-year-old college student after she sent in photos along with an application to be a guest for a Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion.
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She added that she “cringes” at the thought of those photos because they “were probably not very good photos” and that she never expected to be chosen as a guest. But to her surprise she got the call.
She recalls wearing a French maid costume ad was standing by a velvet rope when Hefner saw her, pointed, and mouthed the words, “you, come here.”
She noted that she spent the night in Hef’s bedroom that night as his famed twins, Kristina and Karissa Shannon, and a few other girls took turns pleasuring Hefner. But the whole business felt “robotic,” she admitted.
“There was no kissing or romance or intimacy,” she says in her book. “Even that first night, even on cloud nine, it all felt odd and robotic — like Hef was just going through the motions of something that had once been fun and sexy. Or maybe it was never fun and sexy.”
But 2010, Crystal had become Hef’s main girlfriend and then he presented her with an engagement ring.
“He just handed it to me in a box and said that he hopes it fits,” she said, adding that she thinks he didn’t formally propose so that she would not have the option to say “no.”
The road to the altar took a few twists and turns — she moved out of the mansion for a short time — but the two ultimately got married in 2012.
Hugh and Crystal Hefner attend the annual Halloween Party at the Playboy Mansion on October 24, 2015. (Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Playboy)
Still, she admits that she never thought that her marriage to Hefner was a “real marriage,” and even chose to wear a pink dress. “I thought, ‘For my real wedding, I’ll wear white.'”
Despite the marriage, Hefner continued his practice of having group sex with other women. Crystal even claims that when Hef tried to be one-on-one intimate, it was “awkward.”
“The handful of times he tried to be romantic or intimate with me, only me,” she writes, “it was just awkward. It was clear he had no idea how to do it.”
Crystal also notes that Hef would carry small cameras with him and would ask girls he met to expose themselves to him in limos. The result was thousands of snapshot of these women, photos that she says she destroyed after Hef’s death.
In the end, she says that if she gets married again — which she hopes to do — she will jettison the Hefner name, “Because I’m done with that part of my story.”
For a man who declared “victory over Republicans” for winning the sex wars, it does not appear that Hefner ever achieved anything approaching happiness in his relationships, much less marital bliss. Rather, he seems to have died a sad man, if these passages from Crystal’s book are any indication.
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