Hollywood still holds its allure for ambitious actors and actresses from the American heartland. They continue to flock to Tinseltown, but those who have already found fame here are discovering it now has a terrible price.Paparazzi, scandal-hungry tabloids, over-eager fans and the combined loss of privacy may be a constant nuisance, but it is the threat of stalkers that has finally stripped the lustre from the lush life. Stalkers often threaten murder and mayhem, and they mean it. Park Dietz, founder of a California security firm, has examined 5,000 stalkers' letters and found that 95 per cent exhibit signs of mental disturbance. "This makes them infinitely dangerous because there is no rationality here," he says.
The 31-year-old who allegedly posed as Steven Spielberg's adopted son, to attack the director at his home, was described in recently-released grand jury hearings as a schizophrenic. His alleged plans to kidnap and rape Spielberg may lead to more Hollywood departures by stars who already feel
under siege, and believe it's no longer fun to be famous.
Sylvester Stallone and Madonna thought not. Recent refugees from stalkers in California, they fled to Florida, assuming that it was safer. Only after they had bought houses in the Miami Beach area were they warned last summer that the serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who murdered Gianni Versace before killing himself, was in their neighbourhood and might have their names on a death list.
Theirs and Spielberg's names are the latest on a list of stalker victims that includes Cher, Elizabeth Taylor, Rod Stewart, Michael J. Fox, Olivia Newton-John, Jodie Foster and talk-show host David Letterman. Then there was 21-year-old Rebecca Schaeffer, whose career was just taking off when she was murdered by a stalker in 1989, and Theresa Saldana.
Saldana may not be a familiar name, but the stalking phenomenon is comparatively recent, and the near-fatal knife attack on her in 1982 became the case that defined the crime. And, lest Britons assume that its origins
are intrinsically American, Saldana's stalker, Arthur Jackson, was a Scotsman.
Elizabeth Taylor, who has hired a former officer in the Israeli secret service as a bodyguard, recalls being stalked by a man who constantly tried to enter her home as "the most claustrophobic feeling you can have".
The stalking experiences of Taylor and other stars have turned security into a multi-million-dollar business in LA. Some firms charge $5,000 a month for 24-hour protection for a crime.
Some stalking takes the form of malicious and dangerous behaviour rather than psychopathic killing obsessions. In particular, celebrities mail must be carefully examined. British pop singer Rod Stewart was once sent an envelope filled with broken razor blades, which severely gashed the fingers of a friend who opened it for him.
A 26-year-old female fan of the actor Michael J. Fox, sent 5,500 letters and packets to him, many of them filled with rabbit droppings. "The letters were very vitriolic, very violent, and very frightening,"he recalls. Fox hired a Hollywood security expert, Gavin de Becker, who recently wrote a successful book about stalking.
As more has become known, the crime appears even more frightening. "Most celebrity stalkers are either mentally disturbed in a serious way, or quite dangerously mad," says Greg Boles, of the Los Angeles police anti-stalking department. That is why he and others may advise victims not to seek a legal injunction or restraining order against their tormentor. "It can make them madder still and send them over the edge," says Boles, who has investigated cases where stalkers have killed with the injunction papers in their pocket.
One stalker, a known psychopath, Michael Perry, tried to follow singer Olivia Newton-John home to her native Australia in 1983. Arrested in New York, he was found to be the man who had murdered his parents, a nephew and two cousins, by shooting them in the eyes after escaping from prison that year.
Perry was fixated by Newton-John's eyes and believed that she was
responsible for the dead bodies he believed were rising through the floorboards of his home. When police found him in a hotel room, it contained seven television sets tuned to nothing but static. Each screen was decorated by a pair of eyes Perry had drawn with various coloured felt pens. "They're watching over me," he said.
It was not a good year for Olivia Newton-John. In 1983, a stalker called Ralph Nau obtained a California driving licence in the name of Shawn Newton-John, used this alias to pose as a relative, obtained her address, and began writing her disturbing letters. Nau also pursued Cher to Las Vegas, followed singer Sheena Easton to Scotland, and arrived in Australia looking for Newton-John.
He had a list of 40 US female celebrities including Madonna, and had earlier admitted to killing his eight-year-old step-brother with an axe. In 1989 he was committed to mental hospital but although Hollywood hopes fervently he will never be released, under the law his case must be re-evaluated every 180
days.
The man who shot President Reagan in Washington in 1981, John Hinckley, fired his gun because he thought it would make him a hero in the eyes of actress Jodie Foster, his imagined true love. Even after being imprisoned -- and he remains behind bars today -- Hinckley wrote bizarre letters and poems to Foster, who won an Oscar for her part in Silence Of The Lambs, a film about a serial killer. Hinckley had become obsessed with the star in 1976 when he saw her in Taxi Driver, and his obsession lasted for more than a decade. Even now, it is a period that Foster adamantly refuses to discuss.
California was the first state to pass an anti-stalking law in 1990, and its senator, Dianne Feinstein, is seeking legislation to make it more difficult to snoop via a computer. While Steven Spielberg lives with his family on a private gated estate between Malibu and Santa Monica, most stars these days are surrounded by security devices including electronically-controlled gates and fences, floodlights,
trip alarm wires and connections to police stations, as well as 24-hour bodyguards. The expense is enormous.
Yet nothing seems to stop a determined stalker. The man accused of harassing Spielberg was preparing to ram the estate gates with his four-wheel drive car when an off-duty policeman acting as security guard recognised him from a previous entry attempt and arrested him. He is to go on trial on January 13.
What he apparently intended to do to Spielberg seems incredible. Police found in his possession razors, a knife, industrial adhesive tape, cords and handcuffs. He allegedly intended to buy masks, dog collars and chloroform. He knew where Spielberg's children went to school and had details of the family's daily routine. "I really felt my life was in danger," Spielberg told a grand jury investigation.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
