Joy was a 'Poor Cow' with a hard life. At the age of 18 she escaped her neglectful parents, only to end up married to Tom, a violent criminal. The one ray of light in an otherwise gloomy 60’s London existence came with the birth of her first child, Johnny.
When her husband was charged in 1967 with armed robbery, Joy moved in with Tom’s accomplice, Dave Fuller. Unfortunately, the solace she achieved during this period ended when Dave was also sent to prison. Unbeknownst to Tom, Joy continued her affair with Dave despite his incarceration and, upon his release 12 years later, fell pregnant to him. Although Tom believed that the new baby, Jenny, was his own daughter, he had little interest in raising her or her brother.
When Joy became terminally ill, Tom left the children in the care of their aunts and uncles, and after Tom's death, Dave took his place as Jenny's legitimate father with a new alias, ‘David Wilson’.
On several occasions, when young Jenny caught wind of her father's criminal intentions, she would threaten to call the police and turn him in. Jenny was 14 years old when Wilson inevitability returned to prison for stealing concert receipts from a Pink Floyd gig at Wembley Stadium. The cops never recovered the money, and if it weren’t for Wilson's "friends", they wouldn't have caught him either.
The money was safely secreted away to an offshore account, where it continued to accumulate the interest required to finance Wilson’s retirement, false IDs, unregistered firearms and return flights to LA. Following her father's imprisonment, Jenny moved back in with her extended family. Eventually, she left London for the bright lights of Hollywood, fashioning herself as an actress with the stage name Camilla Rhodes.
Times had been tough for Jenny, as they had been for her mother Joy, but with her looks, street smarts and charm, she found herself a wealthy benefactor - Terry Valentine.
Like Wilson, Terry's heyday was the sixties; however, instead of armed robbery, Terry made his fortune producing and promoting music. As the money began to dwindle away, Terry's security consultant Avery connected him with a powerful criminal underworld. Laundering money for the mob provided him with the capital required to keep him in the lifestyle he’d grown accustomed to. And when his young wannabe actress girlfriend Jenny wanted a role in Adam Kesher’s new movie, The Sylvia North Story, Terry’s mob connections secured it for her.
Jenny was furious when she discovered that Terry had pulled the strings that had gotten her the part, and with the support of her acting school friend Eduardo, she confronted the mobsters at one of their warehouses downtown. There, she discovered that Terry was also involved in drug trafficking, and like she’d done to her father, she threatened to turn him in to the authorities. Terry flew into a rage and bashed her head in. To cover up Jenny’s murder, Avery and Gordon (Terry’s bodyguard), staged a car crash on Mulholland Drive. This would set in motion a series of events that would culminate in the suicide of Jenny's mentally unhinged acting friend, Diane Selwyn.
Diane moved to Hollywood with dreams of making it big. Instead, she was left to watch from the sidelines as Jenny (AKA Camilla) scored the lead role in The Sylvia North Story and was courted by the film’s big shot director. In Diane’s mind, not only was the role meant for her, but she and Camilla were in an intimate relationship.
When Diane learned of Camilla’s suspicious car accident, Diane’s delusions led her to believe that she was somehow responsible for it; that she had, in fact, hired a hitman to murder Camilla. Overwhelmed by grief and guilt, Diane lay in her bed and shot herself in the face, where her body remained undiscovered for days.
The news of Jenny’s death also reached Wilson via a letter sent from Eduardo. Armed with his tools of the trade and a bottle of Old Spice, The Limey boarded a plane bound for Los Angeles. There, he would exact bloody revenge on the mobsters that Terry worked with and the bodyguard that faked Jenny’s death. But when he came face to face with Terry Valentine, Wilson could not bring himself to pull the trigger.
He realised that the environment he had raised Jenny in, his various criminal pursuits and life choices, were just as responsible for Jenny’s death as the wall that had caved her skull in. Wilson returned to London, content with the knowledge that Terry was likely ruined and that his daughter could finally rest in peace.
