Captain Kirk's abused model wife, Nerine Kidd Shatner, dead in the deep end at the bottom of William Shatner's pool

True Crime, Fashion and Passion

Nerine Kidd was born bold, beautiful, and tenacious. Her charisma captivated people and took her around the world as a model and finally to California as an actress. We never know what fate has in store for us and Phillip never would have expected this tragic Hollywood story for Nerine when they met in the early eighties at the Pensione Carrobbio in Milan.

The next few decades following our wild modeling days in Europe, Noreen worked hard and struggled to achieve what would appear to be a picture-perfect life with one of Hollywood's biggest and most desirable stars. Who knew it would turn out to be a deadly nightmare? In her last few sad and turbulent weeks of her life Nerine seem to be struggling as she reached out to Phillip for comfort from an old friend. She shared some shocking revelations and scandalous secrets with me in what would be our last phone call. Her personal life and her struggle with alcohol, her husband and they're precarious sex life we're not what the world would have expected from their TV favorite Captain Kirk.

We know there are two sides to every story: each husband and wife have their own perspective and version of a marriage. Alcoholism and addiction are a pandemic in Hollywood. There is a secret circuit of stay-at-home wives drowning themselves, their sorrows, and addiction issues in a bottle. Someone’s dependency on alcohol and pills can color the way someone sees their life, behavior, and the way people are treating them. However, over the past few decades as Nerine's last conversation with Phillip haunted him. He is also sure there is a very blurry line between the truth and William Shatner’s overly dramatic and self-aggrandizing revisionist history. Shatner has a history of telling the private personal stories, including that of his close friend Leonard Nimoy as well. Shatner has a way of always making himself the victim or the hero in the story, Sadly, this desperate need to be the hero alienated his best friend Dr Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in the last few years of his life.

Having other friends with substance abuse issues and being very empathetic and attuned, Phillip has learned to listen carefully. Phillip learned not to judge and to try to understand what his friends were going through that is triggering these addictions and this self-loathing behavior. Phillip has felt that if you really listen you can hear & you can separate what is fact or fiction in the desperation of your friends cries for help. In the world of divorce and big business it is often said it's cheaper to keep her when wives are entitled to their fair share of the money. However, Hollywood in the '90s was often a dangerous place for unwanted wives when their time was up and they no longer suited or fitted into the needs of powerful Hollywood. Husbands Robert Blake, OJ Simpson, and William Shatner’s wives all met untimely deaths that we may never really know the truth about. Nerine was bold, beautiful, and only 40 years old when her athletic and battered body was found face down, floating lifeless, bruised, boozed up, and full of pills when her TV star husband found her dead. Many people still wonder if this death was really accidental, or murder was it another classic Hollywood case of the cover girl & the cover up or is it just a tragic end to a tumultuous life of fame and it's addictions. We may never know the real answer but in this episode, you will learn more about Phillip’s beautiful friend Nerine and her secret fife and private hell with one of Hollywood's biggest legends and cult figures.

True Crime, Fashion, and Passion is recorded and edited at DNR Studios in New York, NY. The podcast is hosted by Phillip Bloch, cohosted by Carol Alt and Pat Cleveland. Our Senior Producer is Annie Quaile. Illustrations created by Antonio Contreras. Follow him at @antonioeldeseo on Instagram.

Special thanks to Paul van Ravenstein, Romaine Patterson, Andrew Bagley, and the entire DNR Studios crew. Additional thanks to Vinnie Postestivo. Visit us on the web at truecrimefashionandpassion.com, on Twitter @crimefashionpod and Instagram and Facebook at @TrueCrimeFashionandPassion.