A jaded life: Ex-dominatrix & another weird death

EDYTHE MAA knows pain.

She knows the pain of wearing latex on a hot day, the pain of having her nipples clamped and the pain of tight corsets.

Maa, a dominatrix-turned-fetish model who uses the name Jade Vixen, also knows the pain that death brings.

Three years ago, her boyfriend - a Manhattan-based attorney with an S&M fetish - was shot to death in North Philly by one of her obsessed fans, who then kidnapped her and killed himself.

Maa, a one-time Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, reportedly gave up being a professional dominatrix after that trauma, but trouble managed to find another man close to her anyway.

Her most recent boyfriend, 49-year-old avionics engineer Peter Stelzenmuller, died last month while wearing a scuba suit in the attic of the Drexel Hill home they shared in what police are preliminarily labeling an autoerotic death.

On Aug. 18, Maa arrived at the house on Hillcrest Road near Irvington about 8:30 p.m. and found the place empty, Upper Darby Police Capt. George Rhoades said yesterday.

Maa told police she believed that Stelzenmuller was at a concert that night with his brother. But when Stelzenmuller's brother knocked on the door looking for him shortly before 11:30 p.m., she and the brother knew something was wrong, police said.

"She immediately runs to the attic because, she said, that's the only part of the house she hadn't been in," Rhoades said. "They find him in a full scuba suit with a mask and tubes coming from the suit."

Rhoades said that Maa took the mask off Stelzenmuller, cut the suit off him and called 9-1-1. His brother was there to witness everything, police said.

According to sources close to the investigation, Stelzenmuller had a fetish for latex and rubber. Maa herself is known for her appreciation of latex cat suits.

Police said that Maa has been cooperating with investigators.

The Delaware County Medical Examiner's Office said that the official cause of Stelzenmuller's death is pending toxicology reports. While police await the final findings and continue investigating, they are handling the case as an autoerotic death.

Maa's Internet activity in the days and weeks after Stelzenmuller's death doesn't seem in tune with that of a grieving girlfriend. In her first tweet on her Twitter account the day after Stelzenmuller died, Maa writes about a pair of shoes that were "high on my Louboutin wishlist."

And, just 12 days after Stelzenmuller's death, Maa posted on her Google+ social-networking page that she was "packing my sexy outfits for Montreal Fetish Weekend."

Maa also appeared to have bounced back from the death of her previous boyfriend, Anthony Ottaviano, 40. He was shot and killed by David Kreig, 42, of West Chester, who was obsessed with Maa.

Kreig ambushed the couple oustide her apartment on Brandywine Street, in North Philadelphia, in December 2008 and shot Ottaviano to death. Kreig then kidnapped Maa for four hours before dropping her off unharmed and fatally shooting himself.

By the following year, Maa was already dating Stelzenmuller and was named the "Strongest Naked Woman" on the Howard Stern Show, according to police and Stern's website.

According to the Stern site, Maa told the broadcaster that after the ordeal with Kreig, she quit her career as a dominatrix.

Maa seems to have shifted her focus to fetish modeling in recent years. She has her own website with a paywall for members and has a strong following on modeling and fetish websites.

Stelzenmuller, who was buried Aug. 27, was an aviation engineer who founded his own electronics installation and repair business, Penn Avionics, based at the Brandywine Airport. According to his obituary in the Inquirer, he died testing scuba equipment that he planned to use on a vacation.

An employee at Penn Avionics was unaware of Stelzenmuller's connection to the woman known as Jade Vixen or of the circumstances surrounding his death.

Numerous messages left with Maa and Stelzenmuller's family members weren't returned.

Residents of Stelzenmuller's well-kept neighborhood of stately houses said that he kept mostly to himself.

No one answered when this reporter knocked on the door at his tidy stone house on the corner.

All the shades were drawn, and the windows to the attic were covered from the inside.

Stelzenmuller was remembered by friends and family as a brilliant engineer who loved music, cars and good conversation.

Many people who commented on his guest book at Legacy.com said that he had taken them or their children on their first plane rides.

"You meet people in your travels that really impress you," wrote Jim Degnan, of Doylestown.

"Pete was one of those guys. One of those WOW people."

- Staff writer Morgan Zalot

contributed to this report.