Melrose Place Actress Amy Locane on Being Divorced and Shunned by Friends After Her Fatal DWI
Melrose Place actress Amy Locane has learned that she would serve no further prison time for killing a woman in a 2010 drunk driving crash. However, the incident changed her life forever.
Locane, 44, served nearly two and a half years of a three-year sentence on charges of vehicular homicide and assault by auto that killed 60-year-old Helene Seeman and seriously injured Seeman’s husband, Fred. On Friday, Superior Court Judge Robert B. Reed refused to change her sentence despite an appeals court’s concerns that it was too lenient, stating it would serve no purpose and would harm her two daughters.
Giving her first interview in more than six years, Locane admitted to NJ Advance Media, “I was prepared for the worst and hoping for the best.”
“I was absolutely terrified,” she said of the resentencing.
Locane went to prison on in February 2013 and was released two years and four months later in June 2015.
“I had worked so hard since 2010 on my sobriety, on adjusting to life in prison, on being released from prison, on acclimating to my children’s lives, and to parole that having to go back would seriously interrupt, if not destroy, any progress I had made in becoming human again,” Locane said.
Although the actress was a model prisoner and attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, being away from her children and enduring prison life was “dehumanizing.”
“You take a shower with 60 other women. You have no privacy. I read a lot of books to distract me from my situation,” she shared. “Guards went through your mail. My girls would send me Mother’s Day cards and the guards wouldn’t let me keep them because they were too large or they contained glitter. Every time I left a visit with my girls, I had to endure a strip search in which I had to strip, squat and cough.”
However, life for Locane has continued to be difficult since her release. Just five months after returning home, Locane’s husband Mark Bovenizer filed for divorce and limited her visitation rights with her children, one of whom has Crohn’s disease.
The actress’ friends have also deserted her.
“Being in prison is almost like witnessing your own death,” Locane explained. “People write to you initially and then they disappear. Then, sometimes you hear from absolute strangers and they tell you to stay strong.”
Rather than returning to acting, Locane says she’s focused on her young daughters and helping others.
“First of all, I want to stay sober,” said Locane. “I want to help people not make the same mistake I made. I want to warn the youth about the dangers of drinking and driving. Everybody thinks it’s not going to happen to them, including myself.”
