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Michelle 'Jasmine' Grayshaw, 21 -- Car Accident

Published Saturday, December 10, 2005 by Admin | E-mail this post

[12/10/05]

Memorial Site

You'd never guess from the photos that she was a tomboy.

Yet her brother says she loved roughhousing, kicking up mud playing backyard football and racing him and a nephew on a four-wheeler.

And for as long as he can remember, Michelle Grayshaw always kept a camera in her purse.

He said she didn't want to miss anything.

But for the ambitious 21-year-old woman, who said she wanted to be as pretty as the girls in the fashion magazines, being photographed was a thrill.

``For good or bad, she loved it,'' Joshua Grayshaw said as he laid out the color photos of his sister on the shiny top of a coffee shop table. ``She was in front of the camera as much as she could be.''

Michelle Grayshaw smiled up at her 23-year-old brother from the signposts of her childhood: on holidays, with friends, all done up for a high school dance.

For her family, the candids have become little monuments in the all-too-short life of a small-town girl.

Early in the morning of Dec. 10, a state trooper spotted her crumpled 2003 Chevy Cavalier just beyond a four-way stop on a tree-lined road that had been well-traveled by her and her friends -- an old stomping ground between Medina and Brunswick.

White powder from the air bags was still floating inside the car when the patrolman got there -- but it was already too late.

Life had suddenly ended for her and two friends, Brian Gerspacher and Brent Birth.

And investigators still don't know what caused it.

But they were not the only lives lost in the wreckage that morning.

For the last three years, Grayshaw had become known to many as Jasmine Grey, a popular adult model who sold explicit photos, videos and online chats to a growing following on the World Wide Web.

Many of those images now remain in the electronic ether as a kind of memorial. Photos on her personal site have been replaced by hundreds of messages of sympathy from all over the world.

Though some took issue with her choice, Grayshaw loved her work and never hid it from friends and family.

``It didn't bother her too much,'' her brother said. ``I mean, she was doing what she wanted to do. She was trying to better her life.''

Cyber-centerfolds like Grayshaw are the technological granddaughters of Bettie Page -- the famous 1950s pinup who posed nude for amateur photographers in groups called camera clubs.

Page thought her photos and movies would lead to a traditional acting or modeling career. Instead, she made little money for her efforts, which have retained a cult following today.

The autonomy provided by cheap computers, digital cameras and the Internet has revived the adult photography business. Photographers, from home hobbyist to veteran professional, recognize the potential for nearly universal distribution.

Some models see adult work as a quick way to finance a mainstream business or pay for college. Others find it a steppingstone into the hard-core adult film industry.

In online interviews, Grayshaw often said she dreamt of someday opening her own spa.

In the 18 months before she died, her Web site was making a profit, she had ended a relationship with a longtime boyfriend, moved in with her brother and started to look over college catalogs. Around the same time, she took another stage name to shoot adult soft-core and damsel-in-distress videos.

Since her career abruptly ended last month, those who knew her are left to wonder what path her future might have taken.

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