Porn Model Murder: The Secret Life Of Zoey Zane

By: Ryan Smith
Topics: Daily Blotter

(CBS)

18-year-old Emily Sander, who also went by the name Zoey Zane

EL DORADO, Kan. (CBS/AP) Zoey Zane: that is the name 18-year-old Emily Sander went by when she was not going to school in rural Kansas. The beautiful, shy Sander was leading a secret life as an Internet porn model -- a life no one around her could imagine -- that is, until she turned up dead.

The disappearance of the Butler Community College student drew nationwide attention after the revelations about her "model" life online.

Now the man suspected of killing her is in custody in Kansas, after his extradition from Mexico.

Israel Mireles is scheduled for his first court appearance today in Butler County District Court. Mireles is charged with capital murder, rape and aggravated criminal sodomy in Sander's death.

According to reports, blood, broken windows, and missing bed sheets in a hotel room formerly occupied by 24-year-old Mireles led detectives to believe that some violent activity involving Sander occurred in the room. A hotel manager contacted police to report that a possible altercation had taken place in Mireles' room. Sander had disappeared after leaving a bar where the two were seen together.

After the 2007 murder, Mireles vanished, along with his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend, and reemerged in Mexico where he has relatives. Mireles does have legal "resident alien" status in the U.S. Mexican officials arrested him, but did not extradite Mireles until recently.

Investigators ultimately concluded that Emily Sander's secret life had nothing to do with her disappearance. A close friend, Nikki Watson, told police that Sander's boyfriend broke up with her after she finally told him and her parents about her hidden life. But Nikki, who also appears with Sander in nude pictures on her Web site (which has since been taken down), backed up police statements by saying she was sure Emily's disappearance was not connected to her life as an online porn model.

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by The_Darklady June 29, 2009 1:18 PM EDT: Why is the mainstream media so fascinated with this poor murdered woman's so-called "secret life" and so less fascinated by the fact she was a college student who was brutally murdered by a man who'd also knocked up a minor?

Emily Sanders has been killed multiple times. Once by Mireles and repeatedly by the press, which lies and exaggerates her work in the adult industry in order to attract eyes to its headlines and suggest that the reason this girl died was because she dared to step outside supposedly appropriate employment options for women. Emily's work in adult had NOTHING to do with her murder, so why is it nearly always the focus of headlines concerning the butchery that took her life?; Reply to this comment