Celebrity Stalking Research Paper

On July 18th, 1989, nineteen year old Robert John Bardo had finally travelled to the home of the My Sister Sam star, Rebecca Schaeffer. He came armed and ready, after three years of obsessively stalking her, writing letters, and three failed attempts to contact her. After learning about Arthur Richard Jackson, a man who stalked and killed actress Theresa Saldana, he paid a private detectives office for the home residence of the star. She was killed at a point-blank range after answering the door of her West Hollywood apartment, where she was preparing to audition for a role in the Godfather Part III (Conner 2002, pg.267).
Bardo fled instantly, and a neighbor brought the young actress to a local hospital where she died 30 minutes after arrival. He was arrested after being spotted fleeing the scene on a nearby interstate, he immediately confessed to the murder. He was convicted, and given life without the possibility of parole. The murders of Saldana and Schaeffer helped enact America’s first Anti-Stalking laws in 1990.
Celebrity stalking brought the issue to the main stage, with similar well-known cases such as those of Madonna and Jodie Foster, but is not limited to just celebrities. Although there are now stalking laws put in place, there is actually action that police and law
enforcement can do for an individual who is being stalked, and some of the fundamental actions used by stalkers are not illegal, such as calling, inquiring information about the person and sending packages.
If there is a heart of darkness in the desire to bond with another, it is stalking.
Typically defined as “the willful, malicious, and repeated following and harassing of another person that threatens his or her safety” (Meloy 1999, pg. 258) and although stalking has been around since the dawn of time, stalking is now a new crime in all 50 states and a federal offense in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain. According to a 2002 report by the U.S. National Center for Victims of Crime, the definition of stalking is "virtually any unwanted contact between two people that directly or indirectly communicates a threat or places the victim in fear can be considered
stalking.”
As often found with recently developed behavioural concepts, there is no consensus about the exact definition of stalking. Most of the disagreement seems to centre on the degree of emphasis placed on the extent to which the stalking evokes a subjective sense of threat. Generally, the various definitions have the following elements in common: (a) a pattern of intrusive behaviour, akin to harassment; (b) an implicit or explicit threat that emanates from the behavioural pattern; and (c) as a result, the target experiences considerable real fear (Meloy, 1998)
When thinking of stalking, people tend to think of the actions involved in stalking, and there is a plethora of research on the people who are victimized by the act of stalking, but any understanding of a stalker’s behavior must first be understood as a more fundamental psychiatric or psychological process. With any disease, there are patterns of symptoms expressed; the same applies to psychiatric and psychological disease processes expressed in behavioral and cognitive patterns. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes these patterns as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern associated with present stress or disability. (DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994.)
The DSM uses a multiaxial system for the classification of psychiatric disorders. Axis I identifies the three major mental disorders which afflict many stalkers: thought disorders, mood disorders and substance abuse disorders while axis II usually describes personality disorders. The majority of individuals who stalk usually have a combination of both axes of mental disorders and personality disorders. Stalkers who have suffer from Axis I personality disorders typically suffer from Schitzophrenia.