Assuming Hefner's perspective, Carpenter cuts through his disbelief in the wake of Stratten's shocking murder. "The irony that Hefner does not perceive . . . ", her argument proposes, " . . . is that Stratten was destroyed not by random particulars, but by a germ breeding within the ethic." She then pivots to the foundational idea underpinning her reasoning and presumed motive for Snider's killing rage: "One of the tacit tenants of the Playboy philosophy—that women can be possessed—had found a fervent adherent in Paul Snider." But lacking any facts in his backstory that would directly link "Playboy" to her charge of a "fervent adherent", beyond the rather tenuous association that Snider was married to the reigning Playmate of the Year, Carpenter is left with nothing but speculation and sensationalism to prove her point. "He had bought the dream without qualification, and he had thought of himself as perhaps one of Playboy's most honest apostles. . . . Instead of fondling himself in private, instead of wreaking abstract violence upon a centerfold, he ravaged a playmate in the flesh."