 Even the ultra low-rent Exploiter is valuable as a window into history. 
Here’s another issue of The Exploiter, from today in 1971. First off—and you’ll want to be sitting down for this—there’s no such thing as an orgy inspector. The story is actually about Ken Russell’s movie The Devils, and consists of stills from the set along with quotes stolen from interviews in better magazines. And concerning the Raquel Welch item, that story is about a movie too—her 1967 French comedy Les plus vieux métier du monde, aka The Oldest Profession. Inside The Exploiter you get more of the same cockteasing, including a story about Sharon Tate. But just when we were about to pronounce this issue a total loss, we reached a story entitled “Girl Killer Escapes from Prison.” Apparently, in 1969 an eighteen-year-old girl named Margo Freshwater was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of a Tennessee man named Hillman Robbins, Sr. He’d been shot five times in the head by Freshwater’s boyfriend as she stood by and watched. But not long after she was sent to the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville, Freshwater escaped (supposedly by sexually servicing the guards, but we take that with a grain of salt considering the highly dubious source). The Exploiter’s coverage ends there, like an old-fashioned cliffhanger: we know that Freshwater is at large, and that she achieved it by (maybe) blowing some guards. Well, we were curious, so we used a handy new research tool called the Interweb—you may have heard of it—and discovered that, amazingly, Freshwater remained at large, established a new life as a model citizen, married, had children and even became a grandmother. Authorities finally tracked her down in 2002, arrested her in front of her shocked family, and sent her back to the same Tennessee prison from which she had escaped. In July of 2009 she was denied a new trial for the third time, and unless she gets a chance to face a jury and prove she was nothing more than a helpless witness to her boyfriend’s crime, it looks like she’ll be spending the rest of her life in jail.
So the lesson here is even the lowest rent tabloid—and The Exploiter is as low as they get—is worth reading from cover to cover because you never know what enlightening historical tidbits might be tucked inside. Oh, and crime doesn’t pay. That’s a lesson too. Well, it doesn’t pay unless you’re clever. Then you can get away with almost anything. Also, if you’re rich. You can pretty much call your own shots if you’re rich. Unless you screw a person or entity even richer than you. Then you might actually go to jail. But if you do, a blowjob or two can (allegedly) get you out. But only (we assume) if you're really good at it. If the moral complexity of all this is tiring, feel free to soothe your weary soul with a better version below of the Welch shot from The Exploiter’s cover. So Sunday isn’t a total loss. 
 The Exploiter's prediction about our future was wrong, but it still says quite a bit about where we are today. 
Above is a cover of the tabloid The Exploiter, from an issue published thirty-nine years ago today. This is the first time we’ve featured this publication, and you can see, with stories about Christine Keeler and Marilyn Monroe, that it was just as focused on sex and violence as the rest. It also had a regular column from Church of Satan leader Anton LaVey—an advice column, no less. But what we really like here is the story about Danish porn flooding America. In it, a criminologist named Bert Kutchlinski says that though pornography was exploding, it would disappear entirely in the next ten to fifteen years—after serving its purpose of liberating women and educating men—and that “participation will become the order of the day.” Kutchlinski’s predictive powers are like a comedy routine, right? Porn will disappear! Hah hah. Because everyone will be happily getting laid! Bwahaha. But consider the idealism involved. In 1971 tens of millions of Americans still had these utopian dreams. Today? Well, not so much. Wait, who were we just laughing at? Suddenly we can’t remember.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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