Being a celebrity isn’t all it’s chalked up to be. You completely lose your chance at any privacy, you have to deal with the constant slandering of internet cretins, and most frightening of all, you are in danger of becoming the target of crazy people who want to date/murder you.
The celebrity stalker is not a new phenomena. As long as there have been famous people, there have been people who have been sending them packages of their hair and crude but threatening drawings of a stick figure stabbing another stick figure.
So that’s why we’re going to examine five of the creepiest celebrity stalkers in history.
5. Mark David Chapman
David Chapman started his career as a crazy person pretty early on. When he was in his early teens he reportedly started fantasizing that there was an invisible kingdom of “little people” in his was that he would order around. This might explain why he spent most of his life drifting from job to job and never found a way to integrate into society.
It definitely explains why he became increasingly obsessed with the book “The Catcher in the Rye” and John Lennon of the Beatles. For reasons that only make sense to people with massive chemical imbalances in their brains, Chapman decided that Lennon had to die in order to save children from “phonies”. And while people like to argue over interpretations of the book, I am pretty sure that idea isn’t in there.
For whatever reason, Chapman ended up outside of Lennon’s apartment one morning where he fatally shot him and left a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye”, which he later referred police to as his “statement”. Police then referred him to a judge who sentenced him to twenty years to life.
4. Grim LeRogue
Grim LeRogue was a guy who really hated Alex Rodriguez. While that in itself is not that unusual, and is perhaps even understandable. LeRogue’s anger transcended simple sports fan-dom and entered the realm of obsession. His former landlord recalled that he had massive pictures of A-Rod adorning the walls of his apartment on which he had scrawled threatening hate messages such as “I want to beat his a**.”
As to why LeRogue hated A-Rod originally, no one has any idea. An untreated mental illness seems the most likely cause. Apparently, however, it was A-Rod’s relationship with Cameron Diaz that was the final straw for LeRogue.
Which is why one night at a Yankee’s game LeRogue ran out the field with the intention of choking out A-Rod in order to impress Cameron Diaz into falling in love with him.
After being apprehended by the police, LeRogue was sentenced to prison.
3.Dante Michel Soiu
Dante Michel Soiu really likes writing letters, which is by itself a pretty weird thing since email now exists. But what is perhaps more troubling is that he tends to write them to people who have absolutely no interest in getting his correspondence. Some of his pen-pals include George Bush and Benjamin Netanyahu to whom he wrote frequent letters offering his opinion on world events.
He also wrote letters to Gweneth Paltrow. A lot of them, in fact. So many that she felt compelled to get a restraining order, which MR. Soiu frequently violated. His letters spoke of his desire to marry her and his anger at her refusal to return his affection.
At his court case, he argued that the since the restraining order, the letters he had been writing had only been an attempt to show her that he was ready to forget the past and forgive her, and let her know that he was still available for marriage. Shocking that he would still be single, I know.
2. Dawnette Knight
Dawnette Knight was in love with Michael Douglas, for a reason scientists have yet to discern, which made her a natural rival with Catherine Zeta-Jones, who was married to him at the time.
As a result, Knight began sending Zeta-Jones a series of threatening messages, including one where she threatened to cut her up and feed her to dogs.
Once apprehended she alleged that she and Douglas had an affair. Which was not true in case you’re wondering. In the end, she was also sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence.
1. John Hinkley Jr.
Sort of the king of the celebrity stalker world, John Hinkley Jr. parlayed an obsession with an underage Jodie Foster into a presidential assassination.
It all started when Hinkley was watching the movie “Taxi Driver” and became fascinated by Foster’s portrayal of a prostitute and began following her career with a little too much interest.
After stalking her at her school and failing to make any contact he decided he needed to change approaches. The new approach he settled on was killing Ronald Reagan, since killing the President is one of the, like, top three aphrodisiacs known to man.
Luckily for everyone involved, the gun Hinkley chose was of too small a caliber to do much damage, although it did permanently paralyze Congressmen James Brady, which led to some serious gun control measures being passed for the first time. And there was never any gun violence again.
