The Bold and the Beautiful‘s Ashley Jones is no stranger to bringing complex women to life on screen. Now, she’s executive producing and starring in one of Lifetime’s latest “Ripped From the Headlines” series, The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story.
The true-crime story tells the tale of serial 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁er William Bradford from the perspective of a 15-year-old teen who was lucky enough to get away. He was a photographer and she was an aspiring model with Hollywood dreams. It’s a 1984 Los Angeles story that’s very familiar to Southern California residents because there was a renewed interest in the case in 2006. The LAPD released a series of headshots taken from the photos in Bradford’s apartment in hopes of identifying more victims.
“I remember driving down Sunset Boulevard, seeing the billboard saying, ‘Have you seen these women? Have you seen me?’ And it was all of these pictures,” Jones shares about the revisited true-crime tale that gripped the city almost 20 years ago. “It was in the newspaper. It was all over LA. And it freaked me out.”
Jones even remembers how vulnerable teens and young women were in the 1980s and 1990s when it came to talent calls for casting. “I saw those ads for the photo calls, where you could become a model. They had them in Venice Beach and Century City Mall,” she recalls. “They had them all over the place, and that was a breeding ground for serial 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ers, more than one. We’re telling the story of William Bradford in 1984. We’re just scratching the surface of one period of time that he did what he did.”
Bradford’s crimes were extremely dark, but Jones’ Lifetime movie focuses more on Thompson’s family and how their involvement in her modeling career helped save her from becoming one of the 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁er’s victims. She describes the film as a true “father-daughter story” with the suspense of a “thriller.”
There’s even a real-life daytime connection to the Bradford tale — and it’s pretty shocking! All My Children‘s Eva LaRue and her sister, Nika, “had a very close call with William Bradford,” and Nika wound up on the poster released by the LAPD. Their case was eventually used in an episode of CSI: Miami in its fifth season.
Jones researched the LaRue sisters’ encounter while she was in preproduction for the Lifetime film, and she says, “[It] sent chills down my spine.” Jones adds, “Then I went and watched the episode, and it’s a slightly different version of what happened because it’s [Nika’s] story.” Now, Jones is sharing another perspective of Bradford with The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story, and she thinks it won’t be the last.
Jones predicts, “I feel like Ryan Murphy, once he sees this, he’s going to jump right on.”
The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story premieres Saturday, Sept. 20 at 8/7c on Lifetime and streams the next day.
