Remembering Mandy Zelinka
The co-founder of Skinny Dippers Club and a distinctive voice in modern naturism has died at 49
Mandy Zelinka, who co-founded the online naturist community Skinny Dippers Club with her husband Jeremy Ferguson, was found dead Tuesday at their home in Venice, California. She was 49. Ferguson was also found dead at the scene. Los Angeles police are investigating the deaths as a suspected murder-suicide. Zelinka’s family has stated that her death is not believed to be self-inflicted.
Most public reporting has centered on Ferguson’s career in politics and nonprofit management. Zelinka has been less visible in mainstream coverage, identified primarily as a Portland native and local artist. Within the naturist community, she was known for something else: an effort, during the early pandemic years, to build a more accessible and inclusive entry point into nudist life.
She and Ferguson co-founded Skinny Dippers Club in 2020 — an online platform designed for people outside traditional club structures, with an emphasis on inclusivity and lowering the barrier for newcomers. She also launched the Naturism Podcast around the same time, envisioning it as a listening project that would eventually become a field guide to naturism compiled from community voices. Neither project fully took off, but the conversation Zelinka was trying to have about who the nudist movement was actually serving was a real one.
Zelinka came to naturism later in life, brought in by Ferguson, who had been part of the community for years. She appeared on the New Nudist Podcast in March 2021, co-hosted by Scott Cline and this writer, and talked with characteristic directness about mental health, body acceptance, and why she found clothing-optional spaces more honest than strictly nude ones.
In the interview, she described her first experience at a clothing-optional resort in Palm Springs—arriving uncertain, staying in her bikini for two days, then finally getting in the pool. She called it “so freeing.” On why she started Skinny Dippers Club, she was equally clear: “If you don't have access to nude beaches close by for your friends, you still want access to nude people. Not because they’re nude, but because of how they think about things... they’re just status quo disruptors.”
Before moving to Southern California, she and Ferguson lived at Tiger Mountain Family Nudist Park in Issaquah, Washington — an experience she eventually turned into Escape from Tiger Mountain, a documentary she wrote, directed, edited, and produced herself. The documentary screened at film festivals in 2023, winning awards. She gave interviews, ran social media, built things. She was not someone who kept this part of her life separate from the rest of it.
For those who encountered her through that work, Zelinka was part of a newer conversation about where naturism was going, especially around who felt included and how people found their way in.
The investigation into their deaths is ongoing. 🪐