Yes, Leslie Lee is alive.

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!!

Several years ago, I provided the background information on the movie AXE, indicating that Leslie Lee had committed suicide in the late 1970s. . Shortly after I wrote it, I started getting emails from around the world, from people who had seen AXE (which was released originally as LISA,LISA in 1974)and were fans of the movie.

I wrote above that Leslie Lee had committed suicide in the late 1970s. Many of the people who emailed me wanted more information on her passing, but I couldn't find any verification. I had been told this by another former crew member sometime in the 1980s. Not long after I wrote this background piece, I found Frederick 'Ricky' Friedel, the film's director, in California. He is still working in films, and has settled into an apparently happy life there. I asked him about Leslie Lee's suicide, and he told me that the story had apparently been garbled in translation. According to Ricky, it was Leslie's mother who committed suicide, sometime around 1977. Leslie was the daughter of a former Charlotte businessman and politician, who has now also passed away.

I am now an award-winning mystery and thriller writer in addition to being a retired forensic psychologist. Mystery writers are, by nature, amateur detectives, and the idea that Leslie was still alive out there, somewhere, was intriguing. Ricky Friedel had no idea where she might be, and asked me to tell him what had become of her should I locate her.

I could not find a newspaper account of her mother's suicide, but I was able to locate a newspaper notice of her father's death in 2006, which mentions his daughter by her married name (I am leaving out important specifics in this story, out of respect for Leslie's privacy), as surviving him. She apparently was married at that time to a man named Jose ---.

Using that link, I was able to locate a real estate notice from Los Angeles referring to Jose --- and Leslie Lee as trustees. I followed up on that, and discovered that Jose--- and Leslie Lee apparently purchased a Malibu property in 2008, when they purchased it as owners. They then apparently transferred ownership into a family trust with themselves as trustees in 2009.

There's more info on Zillow and such, but way more than you're probably interested in. One occupational hazard in writing private eye novels is that you learn how to mine data, and sometimes once you get rolling it's hard to stop. In any case, I also am holding back a lot of specifics, as I mentioned, in order to protect her privacy.

I did hit the jackpot, however, with another search, which led to a notification of a dive shop owner in Cabo San Lucas named Jose --- and his wife--yep--Leslie Lee. They are listed as the officers of an LLC that owns a dive boat called the Solmar V there, and there is a picture of her on their site. You can look up the website by googling it.

This led to another site, with more pictures and videos of the 112-foot dive boat, along with some of Leslie and Jose.

In any case, she does appear to still be alive, and I was very happy to report to Ricky Friedel that she actually lived just a couple of miles away from him! I have no idea whether they have met after I told him about her. In any case, it is clear that the news I received in the 1980s that Leslie had killed herself was mistaken. The person who told me this apparently had heard about her mother's suicide, and got the story wrong.

I am very happy to be able to clear this up, and to provide Leslie with a somewhat happier ending to her story.