Teresa Carpenter is a Pulitzer prize winning, bestselling American author. She was born in Independence, Missouri, and lives with her husband Steven Levy (Newsweek columnist and author of Hackers) in New York's Greenwich Village.

Awards[link]

Her articles in the Village Voice in the 1980s won the Pulitzer Prize for best feature writing, as well as two Clarion awards, the Page One award, and the Front Page award. Carpenter was awarded the 1981 Pulitzer in Feature Writing after it was revealed the original winner Janet Cooke fabricated an article.

Books[link]

She is author of four books: Without a Doubt (1997) (with Marcia Clark), a New York Times #1 bestseller; Missing Beauty (1988), a New York Times bestseller; Mob Girl (1992); and The Miss Stone Affair (2003).

Anthologies[link]

Carpenter's articles have appeared in the following anthologies: Pulitzer Prize Feature Stories, edited by David Garlock; Profiles in Courage for our Time, edited by Caroline Kennedy; The Village Voice Anthology, edited by Geoffrey Stokes; Feature Writing for Newspapers and Magazines, edited by Edward Jay Friedlander and John Lee;and Excellence in Reporting, edited by Edward Jay Friedlander, Harry Marsh, and Mike Masterson.

External links[link]

• Teresa Carpenter home page
• Works by or about Teresa Carpenter in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Karen Carpenter
Karen Carpenter, early 1970s
Background information
Birth name	Karen Anne Carpenter
Born	(1950-03-02)March 2, 1950 New Haven, Connecticut, United States
Origin	Los Angeles, California, United States
Died	February 4, 1983(1983-02-04) (aged 32) Downey, California, United States
Genres	Pop, soft rock
Occupations	Musician, singer
Instruments	Vocals, drums, percussion
Years active	1965–1983
Labels	A&M
Associated acts	Carpenters, Richard Carpenter
Website	Richard and Karen Carpenter
Notable instruments
Ludwig Drums

Karen Anne Carpenter (March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983) was an American singer and drummer. She and her brother, Richard, formed the 1970s duo Carpenters, commonly called The Carpenters. She was a drummer whose skills earned her admiration from her peers, although she is most well known for her vocal performances of idealistic romantic ballads.

Carpenter suffered from anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder of extreme weight loss dieting, which was a little-known illness at the time. She died at the age of 32 from heart failure, caused by complications related to her illness which caused her to believe mistakenly that she needed to lose weight.^[1]

Early life[link]

Carpenter was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Agnes Reuwer Tatum and Harold Bertram Carpenter.^[2] When she was young, she enjoyed playing baseball with other children on the street. On the TV program This Is Your Life, she stated that she liked pitching.^[3] In the early 1970s, she went on to play as the pitcher on the Carpenters' official softball team.^[4] Karen's brother, Richard, had developed an interest in music at an early age, becoming a piano prodigy. Karen showed less interest in music as a young child. The family moved in June 1963 to the Los Angeles suburb of Downey.

When Karen entered Downey High School, she joined the school band. The conductor (who had previously taught her older brother) gave her the glockenspiel, an instrument she disliked. After admiring the performance of a friend named Frankie Chavez, she asked the conductor if she could play the drums instead. She and her brother made their first recordings in 1965 and 1966. The following year Karen began dieting. Under a doctor's guidance she went on the Stillman Diet. She rigorously ate lean foods, drank 8 glasses of water a day, and avoided fatty foods. Karen was 5'4" (165 cm) in height and before dieting weighed 145 pounds (66 kg). By September 1975, her weight was 91 pounds (41 kg).^[5]

Music career[link]

From 1965 to 1968, Karen, her brother Richard, and his college friend Wes Jacobs, a bassist and tuba player, formed The Richard Carpenter Trio. The band played jazz at numerous nightclubs and also appeared on a TV talent show called Your All-American College Show. Karen, Richard, and other musicians, including Gary Sims and John Bettis, also performed as an ensemble known as Spectrum. Spectrum focused on a harmonious and vocal sound, and recorded many demo tapes in the garage studio of friend and bassist Joe Osborn. Many of those tapes were rejected. According to former Carpenters member John Bettis, those rejections "took their toll."^[6] The tapes of the original sessions were lost in a fire at Joe Osborn's house, and the surviving versions of those early songs exist as acetate pressings.^[7] Finally, in April 1969, A&M Records signed the Carpenters to a recording contract. Karen Carpenter sang most of the songs on the band's first album, Offering (later retitled Ticket to Ride). The issued single (later the title track), which was a cover of a Beatles song, became their first single; it reached #54 on the Billboard Hot 100 Charts. Their next album, 1970's Close to You, featured two massive hit singles: "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun." They peaked at #1 and #2, respectively, on the Hot 100.

Karen and Richard Carpenter, at the White House on August 1, 1972.

Karen started out as both the group's drummer and lead singer, and she originally sang all her vocals from behind the drum set. Eventually, she was persuaded to stand at the microphone to sing the band's hits while another musician played the drums, although she still did some drumming. (Former Disney Mouseketeer Cubby O'Brien served as the band's other drummer for many years.) After the release of Now & Then in 1973, the albums tended to have Karen singing more and drumming less. At this time her brother Richard developed an addiction to Quaaludes. The Carpenters frequently canceled tour dates, and they stopped touring altogether after their September 4, 1978, concert at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. In 1981, after the release of the Made in America album (which turned out to be their last), the Carpenters returned to the stage and did some tour dates, including their final live performance in Brazil.

Recognition of drumming skills[link]

Karen's drumming was praised by fellow drummers Hal Blaine, Cubby O'Brien, Buddy Rich^[8] and by Modern Drummer magazine.^[9] According to Richard Carpenter in an interview, Karen always considered herself a "drummer who sang." Carpenter started playing the drums in 1964. She was always enthusiastic about the drums and taught herself how to play complicated drum lines with "exotic time signatures," according to Richard Carpenter.^[6]

Solo album[link]

In 1979, Richard Carpenter took a year off to cure a dependency on Quaaludes,^[10] and Karen decided to make a solo album with producer Phil Ramone. Her solo work was markedly different from usual Carpenters fare, consisting of adult-oriented and disco/dance-tempo material with more sexual lyrics and the use of Karen's higher vocal register. The project met a tepid response from Richard and A&M executives in early 1980. The album was shelved by A&M CEO Herb Alpert, in spite of Quincy Jones' attempts to talk Alpert into releasing the record after some tracks had been remixed.^[11] A&M made the Carpenters pay $400,000 to cover the cost of recording Karen's unreleased solo album, an amount which was to be charged against the duo's future royalties.^[12][13] Carpenters fans got a taste of the album in 1989 when some of its tracks (as remixed by Richard) were mixed onto the album Lovelines, the final album of Carpenters' new unreleased material. Seven years later, in 1996, the entire album, featuring mixes approved by Karen before her death and one unmixed bonus track, was finally released.

Personal life[link]

Karen lived with her parents until she was 26 years old. After the Carpenters became successful in the early 1970s, she and her brother bought two apartment buildings in Downey as a financial investment. Formerly named the "Geneva," the two complexes were renamed "Close To You" and "Only Just Begun" in honor of the duo's first smash hits. Both apartment buildings can still be found at 8356 and 8353 (respectively) 5th Street, Downey, California.^[14] In 1976, Karen bought two Century City apartments, gutted them, and turned them into one condominium. Located at 2222 Avenue of the Stars, the doorbell chimed the first six notes of "We've Only Just Begun." As a housewarming gift, her mother gave her a collection of leather-bound classic works of literature. Karen collected Disney memorabilia, loved to play softball and baseball, and listed Petula Clark, Olivia Newton-John and Dionne Warwick among her closest friends.

Karen dated a number of well-known men, including Mike Curb, Tony Danza, Mark Harmon, Steve Martin and Alan Osmond.^[11] After a whirlwind romance, Karen married real-estate developer Thomas James Burris on August 31, 1980, in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Burris, divorced with an 18-year-old son, was nine years her senior. A new song performed by Karen at the ceremony, "Because We Are In Love," was released in 1981.

Final months[link]

The song "Now," recorded in April 1982, was the last song Karen Carpenter recorded. She recorded it after a two-week intermission in her therapy with psychotherapist Steven Levenkron in New York City for her anorexia, during which she had lost a considerable amount of weight. In September 1982, her treatment took a negative, downward slope of events when Carpenter called her psychotherapist to tell him she felt dizzy and that her heart was beating irregularly. She was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and hooked up to an intravenous drip, which was the cause of her much debated^{[by whom?]} 30-pound weight gain in eight weeks.

Carpenter returned to California in November 1982, determined to reinvigorate her career, finalize her divorce, and begin a new album with Richard. She had gained 30 pounds over a two-month stay in New York, and the sudden weight gain (much of which was the result of intravenous feeding) further strained her heart, which was already weak from years of crash dieting. During her illness, in order to lose weight, she had taken thyroid replacement medication (to speed up her metabolism)^[15] and laxatives.^[16] On December 17, 1982, she made her final public appearance in the "multi-purpose" room of the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California, singing for her godchildren and their classmates who attended the school. She sang Christmas carols for friends.^[1]

Death[link]

On February 4, 1983, less than a month before her 33rd birthday, Karen suffered heart failure at her parents' home in Downey, California. She was taken to Downey Community Hospital, where she was pronounced dead twenty minutes later. The Los Angeles coroner gave the cause of death as "heartbeat irregularities brought on by chemical imbalances associated with anorexia nervosa."^[17] Under the anatomical summary, the first item was heart failure, with anorexia as second. The third finding was cachexia, which is extremely low weight and weakness and general body decline associated with chronic disease. Her divorce was scheduled to have been finalized that day. The autopsy stated that Carpenter's death was the result of emetine cardiotoxicity due to anorexia nervosa, revealing that Carpenter had poisoned herself with ipecac syrup, an emetic often used to induce vomiting in cases of overdosing or poisoning.^[17] Carpenter's use of ipecac syrup was later disputed by Agnes and Richard, who both stated that they never found empty vials of ipecac in her apartment and have denied that there was any concrete evidence that Karen had been vomiting.^[18] Richard also expressed that he believes Karen was not willing to ingest ipecac syrup because of the potential damage it presented to her vocal cords and that she relied on laxatives alone to maintain her low body weight.

Her funeral service took place on February 8, 1983, at the Downey United Methodist Church. Dressed in a rose colored suit, Carpenter lay in an open white casket. Over 1,000 mourners passed through to say goodbye, among them her friends Dorothy Hamill, Olivia Newton-John, Petula Clark, and Dionne Warwick. Carpenter's estranged husband Tom attended her funeral, where he took off his wedding ring and threw it into the casket.^[11] She was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California. In 2003, Richard Carpenter had Karen re-interred, along with their parents, in a Carpenter family mausoleum at the Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village, California, which is closer to his Southern California home.

After death[link]

Carpenter's star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Carpenter's death brought lasting media attention to anorexia nervosa and also to bulimia. In the years after Carpenter's death, a number of celebrities decided to go public about their eating disorders, among them actress Tracey Gold^{[citation needed]} and Diana, Princess of Wales.^[19] Medical centres and hospitals began receiving increased contacts from people with these disorders^{[citation needed]}. The general public had little knowledge of anorexia nervosa and bulimia prior to Carpenter's death, making the condition difficult to identify and treat.^[20] Her family started the "Karen A. Carpenter Memorial Foundation," which raised money for research on anorexia nervosa and eating disorders. Today the name of the organization has been changed to the "Carpenter Family Foundation." In addition to eating disorders, the foundation now funds the arts, entertainment and education.

On October 12, 1983, the Carpenters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It is located at 6931 Hollywood Blvd., a few yards from the Kodak Theater.^[21] Richard, Harold and Agnes Carpenter attended the inauguration, as did many fans. In 1987, movie director Todd Haynes used songs by Richard and Karen in his movie Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. In the movie, Haynes portrayed the Carpenters with Barbie dolls, rather than live actors. The movie was later pulled from distribution after Richard Carpenter won a court case involving song royalties; Haynes had not obtained legal permission to use the Carpenters' recordings. On January 1, 1989, the similarly titled made-for-TV movie The Karen Carpenter Story aired on CBS with Cynthia Gibb in the title role. Gibb lip-synced the songs to Carpenter's recorded voice. Both films use the song "This Masquerade" in the background while showing Karen's marriage to Burris.

Lists containing Karen Carpenter[link]

• 1975 – In Playboy magazine's annual opinion poll, its readers voted Karen Carpenter the Best Rock Drummer of the year. Apparently this greatly displeased John Bonham from Led Zeppelin as he came in second. He was quoted as saying: "I'd like to have it publicised that I came in after Karen Carpenter in the Playboy drummer poll! She couldn't last ten minutes with a Zeppelin number."^[22]

• 1999 – VH1 ranked Karen Carpenter at #29 on its list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll.^[23]

• 2008 – Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Karen Carpenter number 94 on its list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.^[24]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• Offering (later reissued as Ticket to Ride) (1969)
• Close to You (1970)
• Carpenters (1971)
• A Song for You (1972)
• Now & Then (1973)
• The Singles: 1969–1973 (1973)
• Horizon (1975)
• A Kind of Hush (1976)
• Passage (1977)
• Christmas Portrait (1978)
• The Singles: 1974–1978 (1978)
• Made in America (1981)
• Voice of the Heart (1983)
• An Old-Fashioned Christmas (1984)
• Lovelines (1989)
• As Time Goes By (2003)

Solo albums[link]

• Karen Carpenter (1996)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Coleman, Ray. The Carpenters: The Untold Story. An Authorized Biography (HarperCollins, 1994)
• VH1, Behind the Music: Carpenters (1998)

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Richard and Karen Carpenter - Official site
• Make Your Own Kind of Music - 1971 Summer Television Series
• Karen Carpenter at the Internet Movie Database
• The Karen Carpenter Story at the Internet Movie Database
• Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story at the Internet Movie Database

Steven Levy

Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist who has written several books on computers, technology, cryptography, the Internet, cybersecurity, and privacy.

Career[link]

Levy is a senior writer for Wired. Previously, he was chief technology writer and a senior editor for Newsweek. Levy has had articles published in Harper's, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Premiere, and Rolling Stone. He is regarded (along with Walter Mossberg) as a prominent and respected critic of Apple Inc. In July 2004, Levy wrote a cover story (which also featured an interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs) which unveiled the 4th generation of the iPod to the world before Apple had officially done so, an unusual event since Apple is well known for its tight-lipped press policy.

Levy has won several awards, including the "Computer Press Association Award" for a report he co-wrote in 1998 on the Year 2000 problem.

In 1978, Steven Levy rediscovered Albert Einstein's brain in the office of the pathologist who removed and preserved it.^[1]

In 1984, he wrote a book called Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, in which he described a “hacker ethic”, which became a guideline to understanding how computers have advanced into the machines that we know and use today. He identified this Hacker Ethic to consist of key points such as that all information is free, and that this information should be used to “change life for the better”.

Levy received his bachelor's degree from Temple University and earned a Master's degree in literature from Pennsylvania State University.^[2] He lives in New York City with his wife, Pulitzer Prize winner Teresa Carpenter, and son.

Books by Levy[link]

• In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (2011)
• The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (2006)
• Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (2001)
• Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (1994)
• Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation (1992)
• The Unicorn's Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius (1988)
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984)

External links[link]

• Steven Levy's website
• iPod: I love you, you're perfect, now change- Salon.com article on Levy's 2006 book The Perfect Thing
• Works by Steven Levy at Project Gutenberg
• Authors@Google: Steven Levy
• Lebowski Podcast Episode 27 - Steven Levy's Wish List Interview with Steven Levy about The Big Lebowski and his interview with the Coen Brothers.
• Lebowski Podcast Episode 27a - Steven Levy on Technology Chalupa and Steven Levy talk about blogging, twitter, internet security, etc.
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Levy on The Perfect Thing, December 24, 2006

References[link]

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (September 2011)

Matt Cutts works for the Search Quality team in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues.^[1]

Career[link]

Cutts started his career in search when working on his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. According to quotation in a personal interview with an operator of another website, Matt got his Bachelor's degree at the University of Kentucky and Master's degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In the interview he was quoted his field of study was computer graphics and movement tracking, then moved into the field of information retrieval, and search engines^[2] after taking two required outside classes from the university's Information and Library Science department.^[2]

Before working at the Search Quality group at Google, Cutts worked at the ads engineering group and SafeSearch, Google's family filter.^{[citation needed]} There he earned the nickname "porn cookie guy" by giving his wife's homemade cookies to any Googler who provided an example of unwanted pornography in the search results.^[3]

Cutts is one of the co-inventors listed upon a Google patent related to search engines and web spam,^[4] which was the first to publicly propose using historical data to identify link spam.^{[citation needed]}

In November 2010, Cutts started a contest challenging developers to make Microsoft Kinect more compatible with the Linux operating system. At the time, Microsoft had stated that the use of Kinect with devices other than the Xbox 360 was not supported by them.^[5]

Cutts has given advice and made statements on help related to the use of the Google search engine and related issues. ^[6]

In January 2012, on the news that Google had violated its quality guidelines, Cutts defended the downgrading of Chrome homepage results noting that it was not given special dispensation. ^[7]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• David A. Vise and Mark Malseed (2005-11-15). The Google Story. Delacorte Press. ISBN 0-553-80457-X. 

External links[link]

• Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO – his personal blog
• Matt Cutts on Twitter
• Matt Cutts at TED Conferences
• 2009 BusinessWeek profile
• Philipp Lenssen (2005). "Matt Cutts, Google's Gadgets Guy". blog.outer-court.com, Personal Blog. http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-11-17-n52.html. Retrieved December 15, 2006. 

Zoe Carpenter is a fictional character from the British Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks, played by Zoë Lister. The character first appeared on-screen on 1 September 2006, as one of three new students at Hollyoaks Community College. It was announced in 2009 that Lister had quit her role in order to pursue other projects; she subsequently left the series in January 2010. During Zoe's time in Hollyoaks she has been portrayed as a bubbly tomboy who often makes the wrong choices in life and has had a number of failed relationships.

Zoe has been involved in storylines including being stalked, entering a relationship with an older man, having sexual relations with her female best friend, being wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of Sarah Barnes and the being victim of a stabbing. Lister's portrayal saw her nominated for the "Sexiest Female" award at the 2008 British Soap Awards, and also attracted critical praise for her exit storyline.

Development[link]

Casting[link]

Actress and dancer Zoë Lister was cast in the role of Zoe.^[1] On 8 June 2009, media entertainment website Digital Spy revealed that Lister had quit the soap and would leave towards the end of the year.^[2] Speaking of her decision to quit, Lister stated: "It's scary but also very, very exciting. I think three years in a soap is enough to do and you get to a point where you either make a decision that this is what you do or you want to try something different."^[2] She also revealed that she had been planning to leave the series one year prior to announcement.^[3] Lister's decision to quit matched that of co-star Loui Batley (Sarah Barnes).^[4] Hollyoaks officially announced on 23 July 2009 that both Lister and Batley would leave towards the end of the year in a storyline that would see "A tragic curtain call for one of them",^[5] later revealing that either Sarah or Zoe would be killed off in a dramatic storyline.^[6] Lister also revealed in an interview with Heat magazine that she was "nervous", but "very excited" about leaving the show.^[7]

Almost a year after filming her final scenes, Lister explained that she felt her exit was the right choice, saying: "It felt it was time to go so I just ran with my instincts. Looking back, I was nervous but now I know I've done the right thing. I love theatre work. It gives me such a buzz. [Hollyoaks] was the break I'd been praying for. I threw myself into the part and enjoyed every minute of it. I had three superb years and it was brilliant."^[8]

Characterisation[link]

Zoe is a former student at Hollyoaks Community College, where she studied Film Studies. Channel 4 publicity describe Zoe as "the bubbly student" and make note of her many bad choices in life and failed relationships.^[1] Discussing these failed relationships, Lister commented during an interview in June 2009 that she believed her character was having a break from men in order to sort out her problems: "I think she's been in and out of so many relationships and her life is at a bit of a juncture; she probably needs to sort her head out, sort her career, knuckle down really and not get bogged down into a relationship because everything takes a backseat when you're in one."^[9]

Zoe is also portrayed as having a tomboy persona.^[10] Lister was asked about this "tomboy" personality during an interview with Maxim magazine, agreeing with the label and stating her character doesn't "glam up" as much as the other Hollyoaks characters.^[10] Maxim also noted the character was "pretty popular with the boys".^[10] Lister has also commented that her character is not a stereotypical dizzy blonde, reiterated her character's tomboy status and added that she is a "very street-smart type of woman."^[11]

Early storylines[link]

One of Zoe's first and main storylines was being stalked by fellow student Will Hackett (Oliver Farnworth). Lister later commented on the storyline, deciding it was her most memorable: "The most memorable for me was the one with my weird boyfriend Will who stalked me. Like I said, it was a bit weird, but I quite liked it as a storyline."^[12] During a fire safety promotion undertaken with co-star Lena Kaur (who plays Leila Roy), Lister referenced the storyline, commenting: "It's much easier to test your smoke alarm once a week and plan your escape from fire than it is to escape from a psycho!".^[13]

In early 2008 during an interview with the Daily Mail, Lister expressed her feelings on the subject of lesbian storylines, stating: "I'd definitely do a lesbian love scene in Hollyoaks. That would be a really good story."^[14][15] It was later confirmed by Channel 4 that Lister's character would be involved in a sexual relationship with Sarah during the new late night series Hollyoaks Later. After the screening of the scenes, Lister explained: "It was quite nerve-wracking actually as I'm good friends with Loui — it's quite a strange thing to smooch a really good friend so we had to get over the giggles and think 'right, just do it!'"^[16] Also commenting on her worries about the scenes, she said: "I thought it was hilarious! I thought it'd be interesting, though. I was obviously quite worried about them. Loui [Batley] and I chatted a lot when we found out that it was going to be in the late-night eps and we were wondering 'oh no, what does this mean?!' But in the end, they weren't graphic or anything like that, so it was fine."^[17] She continued: "It was completely mental filming them. Loui and I just had a massive attack of the giggles. I think the crew were more embarrassed than we were! We were kind of ignored for the day."^[17]

Speaking to entertainment news website Digital Spy about Sarah and Zoe's relationship, Lister explained: "I don't think they do have feelings for each other in that way. Last year happened and Zoe put it down to history and experience — one of those things that teenagers get up to occasionally and she was quite happy to leave it there. They've got through a lot and their relationship is really quite special. There's a lot of love there but Zoe's not got anything sexual for Sarah — it's purely a deep friendship."^[18] Meanwhile, Batley said: "I think that for Sarah, Zoe's the best friend she's ever had — a lot of people in her life have let her down but Zoe's her rock. Even though they've had their fall-outs, she's always been there for her and she loves her as a friend. I think Zoe feels the same. But for Sarah it's something more — she completely relies on her and that turns into love for her as well."^[18]

Imprisonment and exit[link]

After the announcement of Lister's departure, it was that revealed Loui Batley, who played Sarah Barnes, would also leave the show in a tragic skydiving death, caused by a jealous Lydia Hart (Lydia Kelly).^[6] Before the skydiving plot aired, Lister explained the storyline during an interview with Sky TV, stating that at the time Lydia severed a parachute to end her own life, later deciding to cut Zoe's parachute so she could have Sarah to herself, further explaining that viewers were not permitted to know who would have parachute after they became mixed up in the storyline's dramatic twist.^[3] Speaking on how Zoe's relationship with Sarah causes Lydia to commit her actions, Lister stated:

Lister explained that she and her fellow cast members filmed on many locations, including army barracks.^[3] They filmed at Tatenhill Airfield, where staff had been told to remain secretive about the storyline.^[20] She also revealed that she was the only cast member out of her, Batley and Kelly who performed the aired skydiving for real.^[3] A Hollyoaks producer released two pictures of funeral wreaths, one reading 'Zoe' and the other 'Sarah', in order to confuse viewers further as to whom the victim would be.^[21] On-screen after the skydive and Sarah's subsequent death, Lydia framed Zoe for the murder she committed, leading to her arrest.

Speaking of Sarah's death and Zoe's false imprisonment, Lister stated: "She's in a very difficult place. She's lost her best friend and there's so much history there and she's finished her degree — well she didn't even finish her degree, she failed that — so she's in a limbo land anyway. She's working silly jobs and she's not in a very good place at all in any aspect of her life. Oh, and she's in prison on suspicion of murder..."^[19] When asked during another interview with Digital Spy about how the character is coping with being in prison, Lister stated: "Not very well! It's all completely overwhelming for her. She can't get her head around the fact that her best friend's dead and the fact that she's being accused of murdering her is ridiculous. She's worried that because it's got this far its ludicrous, so who's to say that she won't be sent down?"^[22]

When the character was ultimately found not guilty and was released, Lister stated in an interview with E4: "I think this is a great storyline, I've really enjoyed doing it. When Zoe's obviously released, it's like a whole new scenario for her because there are people who haven't really trusted her or believed in her. People that have really let her down, and plus the fact she hasn't got over Sarah [...] being killed yet either. She hasn't had the chance to deal with that, so that's really interesting, and she still wants Lydia to go down!"^[23] The character of Zoe then set out to expose Lydia as Sarah's killer. She befriended her, and even seduced her in order to gain a confession. During an interview about Zoe's new scheme, Lister said:

Lister continued, "It all gets really messy from here! Because Lydia's really deranged, Lydia starts thinking that because she loved Sarah and Sarah loved Zoe, if she gets with Zoe, that'll be the final piece in the puzzle and it'll all work out."^[24] She explained: "Lydia starts becoming obsessed with Zoe and to keep control, Zoe has to go with it. There's a point where Lydia kisses her! And then Mike walks in and kicks Zoe out."^[25]