Her father, James Druck, was implicated in a horse-killing insurance scam. Druck, who died of cancer in 1990, was never charged. But a 1992 Sports Illustrated article chronicled the tale of confessed horse killer Tommy Burns, who said the elder Druck, a lawyer who defended insurance companies, showed him how to electrocute horses so the deaths appeared natural.
Burns said he electrocuted an acclaimed show horse, Henry the Hawk, in 1982. That was Lisa Druck's horse. Mc- Inerney may have captured some of the teenage Druck's reaction to the death of the animal through his narrator, Alison Poole, in "Story of My Life":
I had eight horses at one point, but Dangerous Dan was the best. . . . I loved that horse. . . . .When he was poisoned I went into shock. They kept me on tranquilizers for a week. There was an investigation -- nothing came of it. The insurance company paid off in full, but I quit riding.
Druck attended the University of Tampa from 1982 to 1984 but did not graduate, according to a university representative.
When she got to New York in the mid-1980s, she spent much of her time partying. O'Brien was on her way to a party at a Manhattan apartment building when she first saw Druck -- laughing and tumbling out the front doors with McInerney in tow.
"She was very unfettered," O'Brien said. "She reminded me of a colt just getting her legs -- exuberant, slightly unsophisticated, very post-adolescent."
O'Brien said she herself dated McInerney some time after Hunter did and that all three ended up friends.
She migrated to Los Angeles in the late 1980s. Hunter told McInerney in the magazine interview that when she was in Los Angeles, "someone referred me to a healer who did a clearing on my energy field. I was in a state of ecstasy for about a week and realized what I was looking for, in terms of medication, was inside of me; it was a higher bliss. With that clearing, all desire for drugs or alcohol vanished. I became sober overnight. And then I became a spiritual seeker -- addicted to higher consciousness, addicted to enlightenment."
She also became Riell. She legally changed her name in 1994, and after a while added the extra 'e.'
"I will say this about her -- she is a little kooky," said a casual friend. "She was a little lost. Not lost. She was more just always searching."
