5 Types of Celebrity Stalkers

In honor of Comic Con and celebrity meet and greets everywhere, I present to you the 5 types of people that stalk celebrities.

The Homicidal Maniac

This stalker-set loves their favorite celebrities, so much so that the only way for them to show their affection is to shoot them in a hotel room. Well, not always a hotel room, sometimes it happens right in the celebrities own home.

Take the cases of Selena Perez, and (more appropriately) Rebecca Schaeffer. Latin superstar Selena was murdered at the age of 23 alledgedly by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her fan club. No motive for the murder has ever been admitted, but rumors persist that Saldivar murdered Selena when the singer confronted her about missing funds.
Rebecca Schaffer was murdered when she was 21, alledgedly by obsessed fan Robert Bardo because he felt she had “lost her innocence” by starring in a sex scene in the film Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.

Justice almost always gets the better of this class of stalkers, and sometimes they get a little more than expected. Both Bardo and Saldivar are serving life sentences without parole. Despite numerous attempts at appeal Saldivar has yet to be given any hope of ever leaving prison. In 2007 Bardo was stabbed 11 times by a fellow inmate. He survived, and after his recovery was promptly returned to his cell.

The Expo Junkie

Every year many fans find themselves at conventions. As I type, hundreds of people are enjoying themselves at the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) visiting booths, trading cards and listening to panels all for the pure enjoyment of learning a little more about the TV shows, movies, and geeky hobbies they like. You could spend hours dissecting the demographics of this crowd into its various nerd categories, but the only one that matters to us is the celebrity stalking Expo Junkie.

This is the person (or paladin) who doesn’t just go to one Trek convention hoping to catch a glimpse of Zoe Saldana, he or she visits them all.  All over the country. Wherever their favorite celebrity may go. It might be difficult to spot such a person at a convention without the proper training, but here are a few tell tale signs: rental cars, Hawaiian shirts, and out of state accents. All are bona fide indicators that you’ve got an EJ on your hands. Also, be sure to listen to the questions they ask when it’s time for a little celebrity Q&A. An Expo Junkie can’t help but mention all of the other times they’ve seen their chosen celebrity. If they drop any more than 5 city names in the past year, you can be sure that security takes notice.

The Home Visitor

This celebrity stalker may be the most common of the bunch. They can’t help but follow their favorite celebrities around and drop in on them just to say “Hi.” Just ask Uma Thurman and Olympian Shawn Johnson.

In 2007 Thurman found herself the victim of stalking at the hands of 35-year-old Jack Jordan, a former psychiatric patient who threatened to kill himself if he saw the actress with another man. Jordan was arrested outside Thurman’s home. Upon investigation it was found that he had  allegedly been stalking her for two years. In one of the stranger incidents dating back to 2005, Jordan tried to gain access to Thurman’s movie trailer while she was filming in Manhattan, claiming he was a friend. In another attempt, he alledgedly gave someone on the set letters to give to Thurman. One of them featured a drawing of him walking on the edge of a razor blade and the actress digging a grave for him.

More recently, Shawn Johnson testified against a man named Robert M. O’Ryan who was convinced that he was meant to marry her. Ryan got caught when he alledgedly tried to jump a fence at CBS Studios, where Johnson was filming Dancing with the Stars. As it turns out, Johnson wasn’t the only celebrity O’Ryan claimed to know. He told the police he communicated with a number of celebrities using telepathy.

The Last Holdout

There’s a form of stalking that more of us are prone to than we may realize. As we get older it’s only natural that our
favorite celebrities get older as well and, in some cases, our love of them may grow fonder as memories of their past performances remind us of our own youth. Herein is the fourth kind of stalker – the Last Holdout. The Holdout refuses to admit that their favorite star has passed beyond their prime and, although they may continue to perform, it would be for the best if they just retired. But the holdout refuses to let go. They defend their actor’s dignity until the very end, often causing the loss of their own.

There might have been a time when you loved Sir Anthony Hopkins. But, you saw The Wolfman. Face it. It’s time.

The Believer

Probably the scariest stalker of all. To them David Duchovny didn’t play Fox Mulder on The X-Files, he was Fox Mulder. There was no David
Duchovny… only Mulder. If they were to see Duchovny on the street (which thankfully they never did since they never left Mom’s basement) they would probably badger him with questions to which he had no answers. Such has been the life of William Shatner and the rest of the original Star Trek cast members. Should you ever find yourself truly believing that there is only Edward Cullen, that men can turn into wolves, and the mustache of Charlie Swan is real, make no mistake, you’ve become a Believer and that’s the kind of stalking nightmares are made of.