It was a tragic end for a woman who once had Hollywood at her feet. When Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff, the ex-wife of Baywatch star David Hasselhoff, put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger this week, aged just 62, her life was, according to one close friend ‘an unholy mess both inside and out’.
After years of battling alcohol and drug addictions, she had recently taken out a loan against her $2.4million home in the Hollywood Hills and was drinking neat vodka at 11am in the morning.
Her addiction to pills, marijuana and cocaine was no secret but her death has shocked those close to her.
‘Pamela struggled with demons and unfortunately those demons got her in the end,’ Jeannine Madsen, a friend of Pamela’s for more than two decades, told me last night. Fighting back tears, she added: ‘It’s a Hollywood tragedy but it’s not the first and it won’t be the last. This is a town that chews you up and spits you out. Some of us survive and, tragically, some don’t.’
Jeannine is the ex-wife of Michael Madsen, who starred in films such as Reservoir Dogs, Free Willy and Thelma & Louise. She regards Pamela’s struggles as typical of ex-wives whose famous husbands have moved on.
These women once basked in the warm glow of celebrity, yet find their lives, like their beauty, fade into cruel obscurity once their marriages collapse and their husbands replace them with newer, younger models.
When Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff, ex-wife of Baywatch star David Hasselhoff, put a gun to her head this week, aged just 62, her life was, according to one friend, ‘an unholy mess’
‘Hollywood can be a cruel place for women, particularly those of us who gave up our own careers to marry famous men, support those men and raise their children only to get screwed over in a divorce.
‘People think, ‘Oh she was married to a celebrity so her life is all glossy and perfect.’ But the reality is that most of the time the first or second wives – and Pamela and I were both second wives – end up paying a heavy price.’
Pamela was married to Hasselhoff from 1989 to 2006 when he was at the peak of his fame.
They met on the set of his hit show Knight Rider – she was an extra while he was the star – and Pamela was pregnant within a year with their eldest daughter Taylor, now 34 and the mother of Pamela’s only grandchild, seven-month-old London.
Pamela and Hasselhoff had a second daughter Hayley, now 32, who is a plus-sized model.
It was Hayley who, it has been reported, found her mother’s body in the bedroom of Pamela’s four-bedroom home on Troy Drive in the Hollywood Hills, a stone’s throw from the Hollywood sign.
Neighbours told of Hayley running outside at around 9pm on Wednesday evening. Eyewitness Hiromi Osiecki who lives opposite said: ‘She was hysterical, yelling, screaming, crying on the street.’
When police arrived they tried to comfort Hayley who remains ‘inconsolable’, according to a family confidante.
She and her sister Taylor were spotted picking up their mother’s cat on Thursday afternoon but were too upset to comment.
The initial police report revealed Pamela died of a single gunshot wound to the head.
Another close friend, who spoke to the former actress just days before her suicide, told me: ‘Pamela was someone who always tried to hold it together. She dressed well, had her hair done, had Botox and plastic surgery.
‘But in the last few months she became withdrawn. When I spoke to her a few days before she died she said she was ‘OK’ but seemed much quieter than usual.’
The warning signs were there.
Pamela, once fastidious about housekeeping, allowed her home to become a mess. The friend said: ‘The cat’s litter tray was overflowing, clothes were on the floor, dirty dishes in the kitchen.
Pamela was married to Hasselhoff from 1989 to 2006 when he was at the peak of his fame
‘Her house was an unholy mess and so was she. It was sad to see how far she had fallen.
‘She was drinking neat vodka at 11am. There were pills. She was smoking marijuana all day long.
‘She’d had bad times with drugs and alcohol before but had always managed to pull through.’
On social media, Pamela presented an upbeat and positive image, at least until the end of last year when she abruptly stopped posting as her addiction gripped tighter.
Her last Instagram post on December 31, showed a gorgeous picture of her granddaughter London with the message: ‘As we step into 2025, my heart is full of gratitude, especially for my precious grandbaby London.
‘Watching her grow and seeing her smile light up my world is truly the greatest blessing. Here’s to a year of making cherished memories, spreading joy and embracing every precious moment.’
Ten weeks later she was dead.
I first met Pamela at the height of her husband’s Baywatch fame. The show launched in 1989 and ran for 11 seasons. It became a global phenomenon, watched in 142 countries and holds the Guinness World Record for the largest TV audience in history, reaching 1.1 billion viewers at its peak.
Hasselhoff – known to all as ‘The Hoff’ – was earning millions as producer and star of the show and launched a lucrative singing career (he was especially big in Germany) and could earn $100,000 a time for speaking engagements.
In the early days, at least, Pamela seemed deliriously happy with her good fortune.
I would often bump into her at Hollywood events. She was just 5ft 5in tall but knock-out beautiful. And a former cheerleader, she was always glamorous with not a blonde hair out of place.
As The Hoff held court with a group of fans and journalists at a Universal Studios event, Pamela told me: ‘I’d better get back to David, he doesn’t like it when I’m gone too long.’
But her words were not said in a negative way. Far from it. She was proud to be his wife, saying: ‘My most important role is as a mother. Our girls mean everything to me. David is my soulmate. His career comes first and I run the house. I’m proud of that.’
The Hasselhoffs moved into a 1.5-acre estate in the Los Angeles enclave of Encino. Their 6,000 sq ft main home was a magnificent colonial mansion and came with two guest houses, a tennis court, Olympic-sized pool and spa.
It also had a pub. For Pamela, who was born in small-town Tulsa, Oklahoma, the pub was a hub for entertaining.
Back then, everyone enjoyed a drink and the champagne was free-flowing, but addiction was not yet an issue for Pamela.
Like thousands of hopefuls, she came to Hollywood at 17 in search of fame and fortune. She told me: ‘I ended up sharing a two-bedroomed house with four other girls. I paid for half a bedroom. I was pretty and had a headful of dreams. My biggest dream was to marry my Prince Charming.’
Pamela, once fastidious about housekeeping, allowed her Los Angeles home to fall into disrepair
But Pamela, too short for the catwalk, modelled for knitting catalogues before landing bit parts in D-list films such as 1988’s Nudity Required as well as TV shows including Cheers and Knight Rider.
She rebuffed Hasselhoff at first because in 1986 he was still married to his first wife Catherine Hickland. ‘He wanted me to come to his trailer but I declined because I was a good Midwestern girl and he was married,’ she told me.
But, by 1989, The Hoff was divorced. ‘We went out for dinner and nine months later I was pregnant,’ she giggled. ‘I guess my Midwestern values got compromised.’
The first years of marriage were ‘blissful’ but, as The Hoff’s career took off and he began travelling the world to promote Baywatch and his singing career, Pamela became increasingly lonely in the Encino mansion. She began drinking heavily.
One friend said: ‘It’s easy to become an alcoholic when your house has its own pub.’
Drugs, too, became a weakness, including cocaine and prescription painkillers. A friend said: ‘She was never a party girl. She took drugs at home. She would drink at home. She was lonely and David was away and when he came home there were lots of fights.’
By January 2006 the marriage was over and the Hasselhoff divorce became infamous as one of the most acrimonious in Hollywood history.
Having publicly admitted his own battles with alcohol, Hasselhoff accused his wife of being a drug addict and alcoholic. She hit back in court papers with allegations that he was physically abusive, something he has vehemently and consistently denied. She claimed her husband broke her nose but his lawyer retorted: ‘The only person who broke Pamela’s nose was her plastic surgeon.’
Then an ignominious video circulated of a drunken Hasselhoff on all fours eating a hamburger.
I was told Pamela had ‘leaked’ the tape and called her to ask whether that was true. She furiously denied it and told me she would never speak to me again if I dared write the story.
I didn’t – but learned from multiple sources, including very close friends of Pamela that, indeed, she was behind the humiliating ‘leak’.
Notoriously shy of the press, she later repaid me by granting me her one and only big sit-down interview after the divorce – an interview that has been widely quoted in reports around the world since her death.
She told how her ‘perfect’ husband once checked himself out of the Betty Ford rehab clinic in Palm Springs, went to a hotel and then proceeded to drink the mini-bar dry. ‘David was the most-watched star on the planet but he was still a falling down drunk and I covered up for him for years,’ she said.
The couple had two daughters, Taylor, 34, and Hayley, 32. Taylor gave birth Pamela’s only grandchild, London, seven months ago
Pamela refused to move out of the family home for months, but an agreement was reached, in which she was paid a monthly stipend of $21,000. To any normal person that would be a fortune, but for Pamela it was an insult.
She would call me, drunk, to complain Hasselhoff had ‘screwed’ her – a conviction not assuaged when her monthly payment was reduced to $5,000 once her children left home. While she had nannies, she loved being a mother, a friend said. ‘She was a great mum. You can’t fault her for that.’
Having found a smaller home in Hollywood Hills, Pamela moved out of the Encino mansion, which was eventually sold.
Hasselhoff, now 72, married Welsh model Hayley Roberts, 44, in 2018 after meeting her in a hotel bar in Cardiff when he was a judge on Britain’s Got Talent.
His ex-wife ‘dreaded’ meeting Hayley during the 2023 wedding of daughter Taylor to estate agent Madison Fiore. Jeannine Madsen said: ‘Pamela was so nervous. I told her to dress up and go with her head held high. She got through it but said it was tough.
‘Pamela never stopped loving David. She talked about him, years and years after their divorce, long after he moved on.’
Jeannine understands better than most the money struggles that women like Pamela face.
‘When you become the ex-wife of a famous man you lose your friends overnight,’ she says. ‘Money becomes an issue. You are used to living a certain lifestyle, for your kids to live a certain way, and suddenly that stops. I’ve worked as a hairdresser and realtor to pay the bills.
‘People assume you have been left rich but in many cases that simply isn’t true.’
Pamela always railed against claims she was a ‘gold-digger’.
‘It’s just not true,’ she complained to me. ‘When the girls grew up the money stopped and by that time I was too old to go back to being an actress. I got screwed.’
I have been told she took out a high-interest loan against her Hollywood Hills home. And some friends fear that it was financial pressures that pushed her over the edge.
‘She was always talking about money,’ one told me. ‘It became an obsession to her. She would talk about the old days, about the Encino house and her lifestyle when she and David were together.
‘She felt bitter about getting older in a town that judges women on their looks. She looked great for 62. But she was still 62.’
Pamela maintained contact with some friends but, as she lapsed back into drinking, lost many.
As one revealed to me: ‘Pamela has two personalities. When she’s sober she is sweet and lovely. When she’s drunk and high she’s crazy and mean.’
Hasselhoff said he and his children are ‘deeply saddened’ by Pamela’s passing.
Posting on social media he wrote: ‘We are grateful for the outpouring of love and support during this difficult period but kindly request privacy as we grieve and navigate this challenging time.’
Jeannine says Pamela called her recently asking her to be part of a new reality show she was putting together.
‘She was still chasing a comeback,’ she said. ‘She was a good woman and a good person. I hope wherever she is now she is finally at peace.’
