No Rhyme nor Reason

You had to know that something was going to knock Craig ‘n’ Kelly‘s plea bargain off the Bodybuilding Gazette front page, but this is not what you would have had in mind. Forgive the gallows sarcasm—I’ve been to more than my share of funerals lately—but an event horrible beyond imagination that has shaken the muscle world has left me, well, sarcastic; and angry; and sad beyond belief.

If you’re a regular bodybuilding-Internet browser, most likely you’ve heard the news: Figure star Amanda Jo Savell was found shot to death along with her sometimes-yes/sometimes-no boyfriend Dave Jacobs in the master bedroom of Jacob’s home in Plano, Texas, early this morning. The immediate buzz was a murder-suicide scenario—Jacobs was reportedly jealous, possessive and intensely resistant to Amanda’s attempts to leave the relationship. As of this writing, however, the Plano police are treating it as a double homicide—and maybe not just to be thorough.

Jacobs had recently been convicted of charges related to steroid trafficking and gotten three years’ probation in a highly publicized case in which he’d implicated two NFL players, according to the New York Times online, and had provided league officials with other names and evidence. That suggests multiple possible scenarios for what went down if you watch enough Law & Order, especially when you add some other stories I’m hearing from the so-called street—which I won’t be repeating unless I read ’em in the Times or the Dallas Morning News.

I’m also hearing various versions of whether Amanda and Dave were off-again or on-again when this senseless act of violence occurred. She was supportive when his legal woes began last year—witness a sweet entry from her MySpace page that’s being widely passed around online—but in another she reportedly said she believed that her association with Jacobs had kept her from being invited to the ’08 Figure International competition at the Arnold Classic. As Savell had been the runner-up in ’07, a lot of people were speculating along those lines. I’d heard she had distanced herself from Jacobs, but that was old news, apparently. Her family led the police to Jacob’s house after no one had heard from Savell for a couple of days, so they knew to look for her there. Details to come as the case develops.

Of course the bottom line is not whether it was a crime of passion or the 30-year-old former tennis champ was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A bright, beautiful, big-hearted young woman is gone, and it don’t matter no way, no how, as the saying goes.

In the meantime the story is all over the news—and the Internet. As always, I caution the curious to stick with legitimate news sources before you start believing what you read. IRON MAN’s Lonnie Teper is headed for Plano tomorrow to emcee the NPC Lone Star Classic, and he’ll be on the story there, so check out L.T’s blog after Sunday, June 8 (you’ll find a link at right).

Photo: A favorite shot of Amanda Jo Savell.