After Rebecca Schaeffer’s murder, LAPD created the Threat Management Unit, the first anti-stalking division in the United States. In 1990, the state of California passed the first anti-stalking law, California Penal Code 646.9.
Several other celebrities have been victims of crazed, lonely, psychopathic individuals:
THERESA SALDANA
Actress/model who appeared in Raging Bull. In 1982, she was brutally slashed by a knife-wielding obsessed fan. Arthur Jackson said he attempted to kill Saldana so that she would die, he would be executed, and they would be reunited in heaven. Saldana would become a lobbyist for the California bill limiting public access to personal information.
MADONNA
A homeless man, Robert Hoskins, claimed that the pop music icon was his wife. He threatened to slice her throat "from ear to ear" for rejecting his marriage proposals and threatened to kill her bodyguards for keeping him away from her. In one encounter, he got within 10 feet of her. He was convicted in 1998.
STEVEN SPIELBERG
On July 11, 1997, the director of Jaws, E.T. and Jurassic Park became the target of 31-year-old Jonathan Norman, who wanted to show Spielberg a lurid script he had written about "a man raping another man." Norman was sexually obsessed with the director and planned to carry out his fantasy of raping him. Norman’s goal was to tie up Spielberg’s wife, actress Kate Capshaw, and make her watch while he raped her husband. Norman was arrested outside Spielberg’s home with a "rape kit" that contained duct tape, handcuffs, a box cutter and razorblades. Norman was convicted in less than four hours and sentenced to 25 years to life in March 1998.
