Celebrities Who Were Killed by Stalkers (Fans)

This podcast discusses a list of the most famous celebrities killed by their fans

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Ay Composition of a Killer Fans, Doctor Cassidy. Here today
we're going to be talking about several different celebrities who
were murdered by their own fans, which of course is stalking,
and that's kind of our focus for these last few episodes.
As always, before we start, just know that what we

(00:26):
talk about here is not meant to be clinical diagnoses,
but it's just my opinion and facts from the issues
that we're talking about. I would think that one of
the most famous celebrities who were killed, who was killed
by one of their fans. I say fans, but I

(00:52):
don't think they're fans. I think they're psychotic, but that's
usually what we call them they were killed by fans,
would be John Lennon. Also, Rebecca Schaeffer is a big
one that people It was in the It was in
the news for so long, so most people have heard

(01:13):
about that, as well as like Gianni Versauce, Gosh, so many,
but we'll go through them. Selena, of course was a
big one. There's a good documentary on on Selena and
what happened with her. But let's let's dive in to

(01:36):
the first one on the list. There's actually there's actually
quite some interesting information. Let me share before we get
into the list. The problem right now that we see
with stalkers is that they have almost twenty four or
seven access to celebrities and where they're at and what

(01:58):
they're doing. So it's not much different from you know,
you and I. If we have a regular routine that
we follow, we get up in the morning at seven o'clock,
by eight o'clock we're in our car and headed to
work or something like that. It wouldn't take somebody very
long to figure out our normal schedule and then be

(02:21):
able to follow us. The FBI, when they're talking about
ways to prevent stalking or people from people being successful
in stalking you is to change your routine up every day,
whether it's just ten minutes here, ten minutes there, or
driving to a different location. All those things matter because

(02:44):
someone who's obsessed will take whatever opportunity they can to
find you to follow you. They get a thrill out
of that, they get excited about it, so they're they
do some pretty crazy things, as we know, but you know,

(03:05):
people like Taylor Swift. In April twenty twenty one, a
stoker was arrested outside of her New York City apartment building.
The police said the man had stated, she knows that
I'm coming here. We're friends, and think about it. We
don't even know what might have happened if he'd been
allowed inside. So people will obviously lie to get what

(03:26):
they want. People will they'll do things that the average
normal human being would never think of doing. About a
month after that, Olivia Wilde was granted a three year
restraining order against a man who kept showing up at
her home and leaving notes claiming that they were dating
and that he was struggling to stay sane, And that

(03:47):
in and of itself is terrifying. But we also know
that I'm glad she got a three year restraining order,
but that really means nothing. It's a piece of paper.
And there's a reason why most of our big stars
have bodyguards, and several of them, not just one, because

(04:10):
people are crazy. Just because Olivia has a restraining order
against this person does not mean he's not going to
try to get it close to her. So, I mean,
if he were a sane person, that would probably restrict him.
But he's not, and he even admits it. You know
he was struggling to stay sane. There's so much potential

(04:32):
being targeted by someone, and you don't know if they
mean ill intent towards you. You don't know if they're
just obsessed with you. You know, years ago, when I
was a middle school or high schooler, you know, we
that was the and I'm dating myself here, but those

(04:52):
were the times of like MTV and we had we
were obsessed with or in, you know, and different singers,
all these different people who were on MTV, and we
had the videos which brought us. We felt like we
were closer to them because we could actually see them

(05:14):
in these videos and watch it as many times as
we wanted to. And I think that but innocently, we
knew we weren't going to, you know, stalk them, go
to where they were staying at a hotel and sit
outside and wait for them to come out so we
could mob them. But but that was like an innocent

(05:34):
form of obsession. I think. I think that I think
that we can like something so much, or even let's
say love it. Maybe love someone so much because of
their music, or because of their acting, maybe because of
their looks. Maybe they're really good looking and they really
have an impact on you in some way, and you're

(05:58):
obsessed with them. But your obsession is very dangerous, and
that's of course what we're seeing here with stalkers. When
that obsession becomes something that is mobile, you get out,
you get in your car, and you go sit outside
someone's apartment building hoping to get a glimpse of them.
You do that for so long, and then that escalator

(06:19):
escalates a little bit where you sit outside their apartment
like they did with Taylor Swift, and want to see
or get inside so that you can be close to
that person. That is when it becomes dangerous. On December
eighth of nineteen eighty, forty year old John Lennon was

(06:40):
shot five times in the back outside of his Manhattan apartment,
and really we still don't know why, but eerily he
predicted his own death. He when he got with Yoko
Ono in sixty six, he will he became very opposed

(07:02):
to the fame that he had achieved. Didn't like it,
didn't enjoy it, didn't want to do it anymore. But
you know, once you're unless you really sink into you know,
very very private places, you're going to have to deal
with that. You're gonna have to deal with your fame.

(07:26):
I mean, I said, there have been some people who
have disappeared from the limelight, but it doesn't happen very often.
And if if they are, if their pictures make people
a lot of money, then you've got the paparazzi who
are continuously following them, which I think is a form
of stalking. For sure. You know, he was in the

(07:48):
most famous band of all time, so he's not just
going to disappear from especially if he's got a Manhattan apartment.
That's not gonna happen. So you know, Lenin didn't become
a recluse by any stretch, but he did almost become

(08:10):
a stay at home dad for the two children that
they had, Julian and Sean Lennon. They set up their
family residency in the Dakota Apartment building on the West
side of Manhattan and made New York City their home.
So certainly he wasn't in any way so far removed

(08:32):
from the public eye, certainly not where they were living.
But before his fortieth birthday, he was shot outside of
his apartment building on December eighth of eighty and he
really what was really so stunning about it was that

(08:52):
he was so much larger than life, right and then
he predicted his death. He said he probably be popped
off by some looney and that's pretty much what happened,
you know. And I don't think per se that he
took that very seriously. I don't think he did. But

(09:13):
it was, you know, by they say, a former Beatles fan,
Mark David Chapman, And of course we don't know, but
there's all kinds of theories about it. Chapman has given
many conflicting reasons as to why killed Lennon, such as
he was seeking fame. That's sometimes that's a pretty big

(09:34):
motivator for people. They if I shoot this person or
kill this person, I'll be infamous, I'll be remembered in
all the history books, all those things. Why you would
want to be remembered for that kind of thing, I
have no idea. But again, you're not talking about people
who are saying you're talking about people who are psychopaths really,

(09:55):
and what they think and how they do things don't
really make sense to us, right, But he also said
that He's also said that it was because of spiritual beliefs.
He said he had a list. This was in twenty ten.
He said he had a list that included Elizabeth Taylor,
Paul McCartney, and late night legend Johnny Carson. But he

(10:17):
chose Lennon out of convenience. Now think about that. He's
in New York, he's in Manhattan, he's in an apartment complex.
It was easy for him to get to him, and

(10:37):
you know, why not go to the one that's the easiest.
It's really quite sad. But he was just trying to
live his you know, John Lennon, trying to live his
life normally, and that made him an easy target, you know,
he also said. Chapman also said that he hated Lennon's
hit Imagine, which he believed made the iconic musician communist

(11:00):
and a hypocrite, and he is quoted as saying, he
told us to imagine no possessions, and there he was,
with millions of dollars in yachts and farms and country estates,
laughing at people like me who had believed the lies
and bought the records and built a big part of
their lives around his music. A year after the murder,
Chapman was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison

(11:22):
and was denied parole for the eleventh time in twenty
twenty But you know, Chapman's desire for fame was one
of the factors behind his parole denial in twenty eighteen,
with the board stating that if he was released, someone
may attempt or succeed in harming you out of anger
and or revenge, or for the same reason that you
did John Lennon to assume notoriety. So really a little

(11:47):
bit of irony there, right. Certainly you would you wouldn't
think a pearole board would say that. I would personally think,
you know, he already is famous for killing John Lennon,
but if he were released, I think he could do
it again. He would you know, he would become obsessed

(12:09):
by someone and decide, hey, you know I've done it once,
I'm going to do it again and be even more famous.
I think he would certainly be a danger to society,
which is what they're looking at, So a good decision
on that. Rebecca Schaeffer was in the sitcom My Sister

(12:31):
Sam and it was. It ran for two years, but
she was really the breakout star and was being you know,
hit up in Hollywood for all kinds of different things.
She was going to be like the new it star.
If you will. But on July eighteenth of eighty nine,
she was twenty one years old, and she was shot

(12:51):
and killed in the doorway of her Hollywood home by
an obsessed fan, Robert John Bardow, who'd been stalking her
for three years. Bartow repeatedly wrote her letters, but as
obsession took a dark turn when he hired a private
investigator to find her home address through the California Department
of Motor Vehicles. Now that's scary enough, right, But what's

(13:13):
really scary is that today, in today's world, you can
find someone's home on Google Earth. You can Google somebody
and find their information just in less than five seconds.
So I think that everyone, I think everyone has to

(13:33):
be very cautious about how you live your life. How
often you are made you know, you're available to people
or to the public. You never know, you never know
how people will react to that. And we do live
in an information rich society, so someone can easily find

(13:53):
out where you live, where you work, all those things.
According to the Today's show that did a story on this,
Shaeffer was auditioning for a role in The Godfather three
and had been expecting the script to be delivered to
her door, but was greeted by Bardo instead. He then
came back a second time with a three fifty seven handgun,

(14:14):
and then during a jailhouse interview, he revealed that Shaeffer's
last words were why, Why, It's very sad. Bardo was
sentenced to life in prison the following year. The senseless
and brutal killing led to the passing of the Driver's
Protection Act, which made it a crime to obtain or
least personal information from a California residence DMV records. Shaeffer's

(14:38):
My sister Sam co star Pam Dauber told ABC News
in twenty nineteen that she still carries guilt over the incident.
She said, I was so devastated, as well as everyone
else was as well. I thought of Rebecca every day
of my life, probably for two years. She said, Yeah,

(14:58):
that was very sad. I remember that eighty nine. I
had just graduated high school and was getting ready to
go to college, and I remember that very well. It
was all over the news. Johnny Versace is another just
a legendary fashion icon, and they have a pretty good

(15:28):
documentary on his death as well and his killer, Andrew Cunanan.
On July fifteenth of ninety seven. He was walking back
to his Miami mansion from a coffee run when he
was shot twice in the back of the head by
spree killer Andrew Cunanan. He was fifty years old, and
according to Vanity Fair, twenty seven year old Cunanan claimed

(15:50):
to have met the fashion icon in nineteen ninety and
bragged that the two were friends. If you watch the documentary,
you'll find that Andrew Kuhnan and was one of those
people who wanted to be a part of this jet

(16:11):
set community. He wanted to be well locked. He did
run in some pretty important circles, and he probably did
meet Versauce. It's something that he was going to He
had keninon, had a very very wealthy boyfriend. H he

(16:35):
was running in these circles. They thought he was wealthy.
He was not, but he was obsessed with that lifestyle
and those type of things. But Versace's family denied the
claims that they were ever friends, and law enforcement was

(16:58):
unable to determine why VERSACEI was targeted. Miami Beach Police
Chief Richard Burretto said at the time that I don't
know that we're ever going to know the answers the
name behind the iconic fashion Brain was the last victim
of Cananan's cross country murder spree, which claimed the lives
of five men. Six days after Versace's murder, Cananan's body

(17:18):
was found on Miami houseboat. He was dead from a
self inflicted gunshot wound. I think he went I just
think he went nuts, you know. And we call what
he did a killing spree because it was just like
he took something happened and he within like a week's time,

(17:43):
killed all these five people, which still can be called
a serial killer because he did kill he did have
a calling off period of a day or two, so
that would meet the definition definitely of a serial killer.
But you know, Versauce, his dream was. You know, he

(18:08):
lived right in the middle of Miami and everyone knew
where his home was. It was a huge gated structure
we look relatively safe to keep people out right. But
he wanted to be I'm not gonna say normal. He
wanted to be where he could be amongst the people.

(18:33):
His routine every single day was to come out, walk,
get coffee, and then walk back home. He loved that.
For him, that was his normal, and that is what
got him killed because somehow. You know, Andrew knew that.
I think the locals really knew. They weren't really surprised

(18:56):
to see VERSAUCEI because he did make that his daily routine,
and so it wasn't like he had, you know, screaming
fans all over him all the time. He didn't. I mean,
he could literally go out and get his coffee and
walk around and then walk back to his house, and
he was content and happy in doing that. Kunnannon saw

(19:17):
it as an opportunity, and I talked about this last
time in the last podcast about stalking. A lot of
stalking disasters happened because of opportunity. People give more of
an opportunity than they should. And you don't think it's
a big deal. You think, well, I'm just you know,

(19:39):
this is just my normal day and I'm going to
do this and I'm going to do that. But if
you're an easy target, some people just look for that
easy target, which is what happened here as well as
John Lennon. So in twenty eighteen, the Ryan Murphy Ryan
Murphy produced the assassination of Giohny Versauce American Crime Story,

(20:02):
which is I've watched that. It's very good but the
Versace family was not pleased about it. The Versace family
has neither authorized nor They said that the Versace family
is neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the
forthcoming TV series about the death of mister Johnny Versauce.
Their statement read, but since VERSAUCEI did not authorize the

(20:25):
book on which it is partly based, nor has it
taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this series
should only be considered as a work of fiction. And
it is considered a work of fiction, I mean because
it wasn't endorsed by the family. But those were the
facts of the case as we know them, right, and

(20:45):
that's what they did. They created that with facts as
we know them, and as the police when they were
investigating it, all the things that they found out, that's
included in this documentary. So that's why it can be
it's factual, but it's not endorsed by the family, so
we will never know if that's exactly what happened. Christina

(21:08):
Grimy a young superstar at the age of twenty two.
She was a singer. She won third place on the
Voice and had two studio albums under her belt. She
was set to make the music industry by storm, but
all of that changed on June tenth of twenty sixteen,
when obsessed man Kevin Lobel fatally shot her four times

(21:33):
during a mean and greet following a concert in Orlando.
A witness at the event said that Grimy opened her
arms to her killer, waiting to green and with a hug.
Her brother then jumped across the merchandise booth to tackle Lobel,
but he managed to escape then killed himself almost instantly.
Described by his friend as a loner with unrealistic fatuation

(21:54):
with the singer, twenty seven year old Lobel spent most
of his waking hours watching Christina on YouTube, as well
as constantly monitoring her social media accounts, and even went
to great links to change his appearance with rapid weight loss,
lasik teeth whitening, and hairent plants so he would be
more attractive to his obsession. And that is scary. That's

(22:15):
incredibly scary. Due to the lack of security that didn't
detect levels two handgads, Grimy's family filed a wrongful death
lawsuit against the venue six months after her death. However,
three years later, the lawsuit was dropped with no explanation given.
I would say they settled it, and part of that
settlement was that they did not disclose any details about it.

(22:39):
Very common. So I don't even know who this person
is because I don't know much about the band Pantera,
but his name is dime Bag Daryl. On December eighth
of two thousand and four, legendary Pantera guitarist dime Bag
Daryl was performing with his new band Damage Plan at
a Columbus, Ohio nightclub. Of course it would be Ohio,

(23:01):
wouldn't it. Tragedies struck during the band's first song when
a fan named Nathan Gale rushed the stage while reportedly shouting,
you broke up Pantera. He then shot the rock god
in the head, and Daryl was just thirty eight. Gail
then shot and killed a bouncer and two concert goers,
and also took a hostage before being killed by a
police officer. Gail's former friend Jeremy Bray told the Columbus

(23:25):
Dispatch that the eventual killer would write down Pantera lyrics
and try to pass them off as his own. He
was off his rocker. Bray said he said they were
his songs. That ptera stole them from him and that
he was going to sue them. Another friend told the
New York Daily News that Gail idolized Panterra's lead singer,
and that the band's breakup pushed the twenty five year
old over the edge he was hardcore into Pantera. In

(23:50):
twenty ten, a protective fence was erected around Daryl's grave
after several vandalism attempts. It's just a disrespectful thing, Pantera
drummer Vinnie Paul told artisan. I don't understand why somebody
would want to scratch their name in somebody's tomstone or anything.
But fans a rabid man. They do unheard of things.
I just wish they would respect him and let him
rest in peace and just leave it at that. Yeah,

(24:12):
that's horrible, but people are crazy. People are crazy. That's
why we're talking about this, right. Selena Quintinilla Perez, also
known as the Queen of Tianhano music, Latino singer Selena
was set to cross over into pop superstardom with the
release of her first English language album, nineteen ninety five's

(24:34):
Dreaming of You. Unfortunately, she wouldn't live to see its
monumental success. On March thirty first of nineteen ninety five,
Selena was lured to a day's End motel in Corpus Christi,
Texas well where, oh my gosh, where she was shot
and killed by the president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar.
She was only twenty three. There's a great documentary on this,

(24:58):
and they actually entered you Yolanda, who is still in prison,
of course, and is claiming that, you know, it was
it wasn't on purpose, This was a total accident, all
these things. But but we know that just based on

(25:22):
some of the events that led up to this horrible murder,
that it does seem like it was pretty planned or
at least a part of what she had thought about doing.
Thirty two year olds Salvadar then fled to her pickup
after she shot her. She fled to her pickup in
the motel park motel's parking lot, where she threatened suicide

(25:44):
for ten hours before being arrested by authorities. There's in
that documentary there's actual footage of her in the car
and audio of her talking to the police, and you
know they're trying to talk her down, and you know,
they did a really good job. She was definitely distraught.
I really I figured she would kill herself before she

(26:07):
got out, but she didn't. Salvadar or Saldivar had recently
been fired for managing the Chart Toppers boutique for embezzling funds.
In twenty twelve, Salvadar's Saldivar's brother told TMZ that she
was carrying out her life sentence in solitary confinement due

(26:29):
to her own safety. That's a horrible life. But listen,
you make choices. My husband says this all the time.
Make stupid choices, win stupid prizes. And you know, for
all that Selena had done for Ulanda, I don't know

(26:49):
if she just felt like she was out of control,
if she had just lost it because she was fired,
I don't know. But it's a shame because you know,
Selena was really on the rise at that time, and
she unfortunately is known now more for her you know,
her death than her work. Andre Escobar he was born

(27:16):
in Colombia, but and was a world famous soccer player.
But he was had the His team was heavily favored

(27:36):
between the World Cup in June twenty third of ninety four,
but Colombia lost in a shocking two to one upset
to the United States after Escobar, attempting to block a shot,
kicked the ball into his own team's net. Ten days
after the match, Escobar was partying with friends at restaurant
El Indio in Midland when three people began shouting insults

(27:59):
at him, and situation quickly escalated into a deadly violence.
All of a sudden, we heard gunfire, and then Escobar
was on the ground, groaning and clutching his chest, witness
Jorge Orango said, with one of the perpetrators reportedly sent
with one of the perpetrators reportedly saying thanks for the
auto goo, you son of a bitch. Escabar died forty

(28:20):
five minutes later after being shot twelve times. He was
just twenty seven years old. According to the Los Angeles Times,
Columbian authorities believe that drug traffickers who lost big on
the game marked Escobar for death. The perpetrator in question,
amberto Munos Castro, was sentenced to forty two years in prison,
but was released after only eleven wow. A year after

(28:45):
his death, Escobar's family created the Escobar the Andre Escobar
Social Project, a social kim a soccer program for disadvantaged youth.
We're not trying to produce great soccer players, rather great
human being, his father said. The school's main objective is
to teach children values so that they say no to

(29:05):
drugs and to theft. Very sad, but you know that's
not an uncommon story. People who are obsessed with sports kickers,
you know, football team, for football teams who lose the
game because of the kicker, those kickers, their lives are
in danger, because there are diehards that just cannot let

(29:28):
it go. You know, they don't think it's just a game.
It's just part of who they are, and when their
team loses, they lose it. Mikhail Lermontov widely considered one
of Russia's greatest poets and a leading voice in Russian romanticism.
Mikhail Lermontov was shot and killed the age of twenty

(29:50):
six when his friend Nikolai Martinov challenged him to a duel.
According to Russia Beyond, Lermontov was also a rising author
and painter who is reportedly very spoiled and relentlessly tormented
his friends with harsh jokes and mean caricatures that gave
him the reputation of being a spiteful and a cervic person.

(30:11):
It is believed that Lermontov talked so much trash that
Martinov decided to kill him. That's pretty bad. Why do
you just not be friends with him? Like? Move on?
Moscow Times reported this was in eighteen forty one, though,
So we've had this kind of things have been happening for,
you know, at least a century that we know of, right,

(30:34):
a century. Eighteen forty one, Martinov, Lrmantov's former military schoolmate,
challenged the outspoken poet to a duel at the base
of the Mishook Mountain. After Lermanov mocked him for mimicking
a romantic hero, Larmontov fired his gun into the air,
but was shot through the heart and died instantly. His
funeral was attended by thousands of mourners. Albert Abassi, Cameronian

(31:01):
soccer star, died after a match in Nigeria. He was
just twenty four years old. According to The Guardian, at
Boss was allegedly struck in the head by a flying
projectile thrown by angry fans. However, a Cameronian pathologist, doctor
Andre Maun, pushed back on the cause of death. Three
months later, by stating that a Bosse's wounds were more

(31:22):
consistent with a brutal beating. The autopsy report revealed that
a Bosse severed an indention of the suffered an indention
of the skull, and a rupture of his cervical vertebrae
that the doctor believed was caused by a knife. This
was in twenty fourteen. Wow, that would be my Dogli meally, okay,

(31:52):
she may continued, bark. Who knows when you see the
injuries to his shoulders. The only way that can be
explained is by a physical attack. Maund told shortly after
his death. We saw a video of the Voss after
the match, surrounded by police and leaving the pitch to
enter the dressing room. We didn't see anything happened to
him on the pitch or anything that prevented him leaving
the pitch because of a missile. It can't be a

(32:15):
slight tile, as the Algerian stated in their report, because
if someone through a tile, even at high speed, it
wouldn't cost such severe wounds like the ones I found
on the body. At this time of the writing, nobody's
been charged with the Boss's death, and the questions about
the cause still remain sad but true. Also, you know,

(32:36):
an athlete, one who was very successful, you know, and
you know, if he were just randomly hit by something,
that would be a totally different you know, that would
just be a sad accident, right, But the fact that

(32:57):
the coroner said that that did not match that story,
does not match his wounds, is something completely different, it suggests.
And of course the story of him going into the
dressing room after the after the match with a group

(33:18):
of people suggest that all of that damage happened while
he was probably in that in that room. But if
they didn't let me say this, if they do know
what happened, they're not telling anybody. And we know different
countries have different beliefs about those things, and depending on

(33:42):
who the you know, the government might keep things like
that quiet. You never know. There's a lot of things
that happen that we will never know the actual truth
because someone very powerful gets involved. But very sad. Those
are some of the most famous ones. I mean, there

(34:03):
are others, but these are the ones that we saw
in the news media. If these had happened during the
time of social media like we have right now, it
would have been I mean, everybody everybody would know their names.

(34:24):
They're I mean, younger people probably don't know half of these.
I mean, you know, they've heard of John Lennon, you know,
they've heard of maybe they've heard of Christina Grimy. Maybe not.
But the fact still remains that, you know, there are
dangerous people in this world who don't think there's anything
wrong with what they're doing. And I know I promised

(34:47):
to tell this one of my other stalking stories. It
is a strange one, but I'll tell you. It happened
when I was at Carson Newman and I think I
was probably a sophomore or junior because I was in
my business classes at that time, and it was business
law class, which was taught in the evening in the spring,

(35:13):
so it was dark early. But of course Carson is
not a huge campus, so you could walk. I could
walk to the dorm from the dorm into the classroom
in less than five minutes. I mean, it was just
right there. But the problem with that is, you know,

(35:33):
with not classes, is there's not a ton of people around,
and it can be very dangerous if you're not very
cautious about your surroundings. And I have to say that
way back way back then, I was not cautious about anything.
I was just a young girl going about my business,
enjoying my time as a college student, very naive to

(35:58):
how people were in the world. I would definitely say sheltered.
Anybody who knew me probably would say the same thing,
very sheltered. So when this occurred, I was clueless about
it and how dangerous it could have been. So I
was sitting in class one night, and it was a

(36:21):
three hour class, so we got to take two breaks
in between, and the room was packed. It was full,
as most of the classes were so packed, in fact,
that all of the desks, if you didn't sit up
straight and watch your posture, your knees would hit your
neighbor's knees. And there was just it was packed. So

(36:47):
I had been to class a few times and one
of the guys that was sitting beside me. You know
how you just talk to people around you, and I'm
a pretty friendly person. I'll talk to just about anybody.
But he started talking to me and we found out
that we had some friends in common on campus, and
he was having a party that weekend and invited me

(37:07):
to that party, and I said, well, I typically go
home on the weekends, but if I don't all come
over there, knowing full well I was not going to
that party. But I told him that, and the class
went on as normal. Then the next it was on
a Thursday night. The next Thursday, we had class again.
He asked me why I didn't come, and I told him,

(37:29):
I said, well, I told you I went home. No
big deal. That was at the first of class. And
then by the time we got our first break. Of course,
the we had an attorney who actually taught that class,
so he lectured that entire time. We got our first break,
and I noticed when we got back from that break,

(37:52):
you know how you can see things like out of
the corner of your eye. I noticed that there was
a lot of movement. He was on my right side.
There was a lot of movement on my right side,
which was really odd because normally everybody just sits still
in their desk with their book open, paying attention to
what the teacher's saying or writing. You know, we were
certainly taking notes because it was a lecture class. But

(38:15):
it wasn't that kind of It wasn't that kind of motion.
It wasn't that kind of It wasn't someone who is
sitting there taking notes. So I really I didn't look.
I wasn't paying attention to that as much I wanted
to look, but I didn't want to be like obvious
about it. But as you know, as he continued to

(38:40):
lecture in the second half of the class, I ended
up just just glancing. I turned my head and glanced,
and this guy was sitting there with with his penis
out of his shorts, you know, playing with himself, in

(39:02):
the middle of class. And we were in the very
back of the class, so there was no one behind us.
We were right up against the wall. And it just
shocked me to no end. I was just mortified. So
luckily our second break was coming up, and as soon
as that second break, as soon as he told us

(39:24):
to take a ten minute break, I gathered all my
things and I went back to my dorm. By the
time I got there, I was laughing about it. I
was like, oh, my gosh, I can't even believe that happened.
It was ridiculous. So I got up to my class
or to my dorm room from class, and my roommate
of course sitting in there, She's like, what are you
doing back? Your class is never till nine. This was

(39:45):
just like eight o'clock, and I was like, oh my gosh,
you've got to hear this. So I started telling her
the story, and then she yelled at my yelled at
our neighbors and came in and we teld them the
story and we were all just I mean, we just
got a kick out of it. It was funny. We
thought it was funny. Well, as the word got down

(40:08):
the hallway, one of the the girls that lived on
the hall she was like the hall monitor. I don't
know which call, I can't remember what they called it,
but anyway, she was in charge of that floor. She
thought it was pretty significant and something that should be reported.
And at this time at Carson Nemen, we had dorm mothers,

(40:33):
which were you know, older ladies, not necessarily too much
older than us, but certainly adults that they trusted in
charge of an entire you know, dorm room full of girls,
because we certainly weren't co ed at Carson Nemen. But anyway,

(40:58):
and I happened to know her because I had gone
to church with her in Rogersville, so I knew who
she was, but I just didn't I didn't think anything
about it. But she went and told her about it,
and then she came to my room and got me
and said, you need to come down here and talk
about this until our dorm mother about it, because it's

(41:21):
a pretty significant event that needs to be reported. So
I didn't really think that much about it, but I
went down and told her, and then she made me
call my parents, and she called campus police and we
had to do a report on it. And of course
I told my parents, which was horrible because my dad,

(41:47):
I mean, very protective father, very protective mother. Again, we
remember I was very sheltered. I had already had a
lot of experiences growing several experiences growing up with stock talking,
and I was but I think I was too young
to appreciate the danger of it. And this, of course
was a little bit of a step further than what

(42:11):
I'd ever experienced and certainly should have been considered threatening.
But again I was very naive and I didn't really
take it that way. But it turns out my dad
took it very seriously, and for years, years, I'm talking
twenty years, I had no idea why. When I was

(42:34):
on campus, especially my n classes, there was always campus
security was there, and campus security at that point in
time was typically older men who had retired from law enforcement,
who just wanted something to do, and they were they

(42:55):
knew what they were doing. Don't get me wrong, but
these were just older men. But there was, oh ways,
always one of those guards wherever I was. But if
I went to eat in the cafeteria, there was always
one in there. If I went to eat, or if
I went, you know, to other classes, there was always

(43:15):
an officer in the hallway. Uh. Definitely, when I went
to my business law class, there was one of the
officers in our hallway the entire time, the rest of
the semester. And what I did not know was until again,
like I said, several twenty years later, I guess, was
that my dad had just gone off the deep end

(43:39):
of freaking out about it. Very protective. He was very protective, uh,
and certainly wanted to be in control of this situation.
And he called the very next morning, he called the
president of the university and he told him Mom said exactly.

(44:02):
His exact words were, if something happens to my daughter
while she is on your campus, I will own Carson
Newman and you all will regret the day you've ever
met me, which is you know, we would say that's
a threat right now. But basically what Dad was saying was,

(44:22):
you know, you better take care of her. I'm paying
you all this money for my daughter to be there.
It's supposed to be one of the safest campuses around.
That's one of the reasons I went to Carson Newman.
It was a Christian college. It was college at the time.
Now it's university. But you know, he really felt like,

(44:43):
you know, he couldn't be there in person, and he
couldn't bring me home and we continue my education. So
he kind of took matters into his own hands and
they put they knew my schedule, of course, and so
that security guard was actually following me around for the
rest of that semester. The boy was actually kicked out

(45:12):
of school and we found out I found out from
my dorm moother that he had a history of sexual
harassment and some battery. You know, I don't know if
they called it sexual battery or I just know that
he had been in trouble for beating up one of

(45:35):
his girlfriends. Definitely had quite a few domestic calls on
his record. So he was a pretty dangerous person, and
he was kicked out of school, and they thought he
might retaliate somehow because he knew where I would be
on Thursdays. Right, But that's why there was always a

(45:55):
security guard campus security somewhere around during my all my classes,
whether they were in the business building or humanities building,
it didn't matter. There was always someone there. And I
had just mentioned that one night. I don't know what
we were even talking about, but it seems to me
it was maybe like Thanksgiving. We were all sitting in
the den watching stuff on TV and so forth, and

(46:17):
I don't know how it even got brought up, but
I was like, yeah, man, there was always somebody that
was after that, there was always like a security guard around.
Maybe it was just where I was paying more attention,
but there was always one around. And my dad starts
laughing and he says, yeah, they were around because I
called and told them if anything happened to you, that

(46:41):
I went own Carson Newman, and I mean, I reckon.
He called like once a week to talk to the
president to say, you know, are you still monitoring this situation?
What has happened with this person? All that stuff? You know?

(47:01):
So I didn't even know it, and thank god I
didn't because that would have been weird. I think I
think it would have just been weird to know that.
But I do know now, I mean, I'm certainly I'm
certainly dated to the world now, certainly not as naive
as I used to be, and I do understand how
terribly dangerous that could have been. You know, there's a
lot of sexual assaults on college campuses, and that's one

(47:25):
of the things that gives it the ranking. You can
look up, you know, America's Safest Colleges and universities, and
it's got a ranking on that. You know, how many
sexual assaults are there, how many violent episodes happen on
this campus, what is their security like? All those things

(47:47):
you can look that up, and it's very important to
look at that. You certainly don't want to be going
somewhere that's not safe. And my parents, being as protective
as they were, would have never I mean, I wanted
to go to U T. I looked at etsu UT
my dad would not let me go there because it
was not considered a safe campus at the time, and

(48:11):
he said it was just too big for me, it
was just too big of a place. And I agreed,
I mean, I agreed, I went down there, and you know,
we visited all kinds of places, but I really wanted
to go to Carsonou and it was just a small university,
of course Christian based. A lot of my friends, older

(48:31):
friends had gone there or were still going there, so
for us, that was the better fit. But it comes
with challenges. You know, they are dangerous people everywhere everywhere,
so you have to be very cautious. But that's one
of my stalking stories. I don't know that I wouldn't
have called it necessarily stalking, but they did call it stalking.

(48:55):
That kind of behavior where you feel uncomfortable, you feel
like you're targeted. Anytime that you feel like something is inappropriate,
makes you uncomfortable, changes your perception of how you should act.
Then that's considered stalking. And it's not like in my situation.

(49:21):
I don't think it was like stalking where he hung
out at my dorm room waiting on me to come out,
because you know, guys were not allowed up in our
in our dorm rooms except on Friday and Saturday nights,
and then they had to be monitored, so it was
very strict. It was very strict way back in the
old days. But you know, it was a dangerous situation.

(49:43):
You don't really know what his intent was. Certainly I
don't think it was anything good, and he didn't see that,
seemed to think there was a big problem with it.
But it was bigger than what I thought for sure.
And I think that many of the these people think that.
I think that if you went down this list, like

(50:04):
Christina Grimmy, you know she had she just with arms
wide open, embraced this guy thinking he was a super fan,
and he had come to the meet and greet and
he killed her. You know, I think that we don't
take seriously these threads. You know, Gianni FERSAUCEI just walking
outside going to get coffee, and then right on his doorstep,

(50:27):
literally on his doorstep, shot twice in the back of
the head. And I think maybe Rebecca Shaeffer probably was
the same way. I mean, you she had been stocked
for three years, nothing really bad had happened. It was
just a lot of letters and trying to communicate with

(50:50):
her in whatever way, And I think you just don't
take those things very seriously. She was literally killed on
the front at her front door. She opened the door,
he killed her. So that's how fast those things can
escalate to it's just scary and sad, very sad when
you're just trying to live your life right. But it

(51:14):
makes you know, it makes you even more hyper aware
that you know, to be in the public eye, you're
risking a lot and you in it. There's a cost
to it. There's a big cost to it. You don't
have to be a celebrity to be stalked. You certainly
don't have to be famous. You don't have to have
a lot of money. You don't. You can just be
someone who is nice to other people and they take

(51:37):
it the wrong way. They become obsessed with you, and
it needs to be taken very seriously. So if you
are experiencing that, I just really encourage you to contact
the police, even if you think, really think it's absolutely nothing,
or you know, it's it's not that big of a deal.

(51:59):
Oh it's he would never hurt anybody. Blah blah blah,
she would never hurt anybody. You don't know that. You
don't know what's in their mind, You don't know what's
going through their head. For them to be obsessed in
that manner is a form of psychopathy and it needs

(52:19):
to be addressed. For sure, in a very safe way
and very quickly. So I encourage you to do something
about it. If you're listening to this and you think
he might be being stalked, contact the authorities and let
them be the judge of that, because you don't make
good decisions. We don't make good decisions on ourselves, right,

(52:40):
we don't. We don't think that, Oh gosh, nobody's going
to do that to me. It's just me. No big
hairy deal. I'm not going to do this. They're not
going to do that. It's no big deal. I'm not
going to pay any attention to that. It's important that
you do. I'd rather you be over zealous and protect
yourself and those around you, then not take it serious
and then something happened. So I would in this particular case,

(53:05):
when you're talking about stalking, take it very seriously. Good
things can come out of it, like that person can
get help, you can feel safer. No one gets hurt.
That's probably the biggest thing, Right, No one gets hurt,
and you are able to live your life normally, and

(53:27):
that person is safely taken care of in whatever way
that the authorities deem appropriate. But take it seriously and
definitely tell somebody about it, preferably the authorities so they
can help you. All right, I hope you enjoyed this
session on stalking celebrities who are murdered by their own fans,

(53:49):
and as always, be safe out there and have a
wonderful day.