Celebrity status is often risky business

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

A 35-year-old former psychiatric patient found himself in court facing charges of stalking actress Uma Thurman. Jack Jordan, the alleged stalker, had appeared at Thurman’s residence on many occasions, as well as on movie sets where she was working, all in an attempt to gain contact with her. In a letter that he sent to Thurman, the disturbed man wrote, "Dear Uma, I love you completely. I feel afraid if I see you out again with another man I may just die, kill myself." Both Thurman and others around her will testify concerning the alleged stalker's actions that have caused them to fear for their personal safety.

Stalking is often defined as "repeated and persistent unwanted communications and/or approaches that produce fear in the victim."  Over one million women and in excess of 370,000 men are stalked each year in America. Over three-quarters of female victims and two-thirds of male victims know their stalker and the increase in incidents of stalking over the last few decades has compelled all 50 states and the federal government to enact anti-stalking laws.

Stalking is usually an individualized problem rooted in a personal relationship. A woman, for example, may struggle to end a personal relationship in a positive way, but her former intimate will not give her up. Such stalkers are both consumed and preoccupied with their victims.  They may have developed a delusional fixation on their victim, something usually found in the case of celebrity stalking cases where the victim may not know his or her stalker. Such stalkers seek to develop a “real” relationship with their targeted victim, or simply seek to develop or enhance their own identity via an imaginary relationship with some high profile figure. 

Many stalkers are motivated by a psychological delusion, a belief held despite evidence to the contrary; a reality they have created that they believe in. They have made up their minds and no one will dissuade them from their targeted victim, no matter how outrageous the fanaticized relationship between the stalker and his victim may seem to others.  Many celebrity stalkers are psychotic, actually believing that they have some intimate relationship with their victim.  Some celebrities have received hundreds of letters, e-mails, and telephone calls from their stalkers. While most stalking obsessions usually run their course in two years or less, others last for decades.

Louis Lanzano / AP Uma Thurman's accused stalker, Jack Jordan, exits Manhattan criminal court during a recess in his trial on Friday.

When protection becomes violent
David Letterman was stalked for years by Margaret Mary Ray, a woman haunted by her own schizophrenic demons for years before killing herself in 1988 by kneeling before an oncoming train in Colorado.  One of Madonna’s stalkers, Robert Hoskins, was shot by a security guard while attempting to break into the pop star’s residence. Britney Spears has had a number of stalkers. One was a Canadian man arrested twice in one year for stalking her, the second time when he was found on her family’s property, and then there was the Japanese businessman whom she obtained a restraining order against after he tried to reach her at two of her residences, her parents’ home and after he sent letters and pictures of himself to her.

Celebrity stalkers many times just can’t cope with reality, so they create their own that is far more interesting than that which surrounds them.  They may be dissatisfied with their own life, so they include the celebrity as part of their new reality, one in which they have a fantasized relationship with the celebrity that can include believed mutual love.

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