Stalkers. Jean Ritchie

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      When Dr Dietz, who is clinical professor of psychiatry and biobehavioural sciences at the School of Medicine at the University of California, was called in to prepare a 600-page report for the US government on ‘Mentally Disordered Offenders in Pursuit of Celebrities and Politicians’, it was to de Becker’s files that he turned for the raw material he needed for his five years of research. De Becker has more than 200,000 items of correspondence on file, all indexed and cross-indexed to show up which stalkers were pursuing more than one celebrity.

      Some of the really big Hollywood names have as many as five hundred individuals writing to them what de Becker classifies as ‘inappropriate’ letters (a top star will regularly receive as many as 4,000 genuine fan letters per month). All the staff in his clients’ offices are primed to send on to him any mail that is sinister, disjointed, bizarre, unreasonable or threatening, and to help them decide what falls into these categories they are specifically asked to be on the lookout for letters containing references to death, suicide, weapons, assassins, obsessive love or special destiny.

      Dietz and colleagues analysed a scientifically chosen sample of mail from persistent letter writers in a bid to see if they could draw up a profile of the kind of writer who actually shows up at the celebrity’s home or workplace, and the conclusions are fascinating.

      Obviously, those who make a direct attempt to speak or make physical contact with the celebrity are potentially far more dangerous than those who merely write letters, however incoherent, threatening and frightening the letters may be.

      Letter writers who send mail from different addresses are more likely to be dangerous than those who consistently post their letters in the same place – the ones who are moving around may already be trying to track down the celebrity or, as the survey conclusion puts it, ‘travelling in a random pattern as they become increasingly frantic to find the celebrity, to escape their persecutors or for other unexplained reasons’. (Both Mark Chapman and John Hinckley travelled frantically in the days leading up to the assassination of John Lennon and the attempt on President Reagan’s life.)

      Those who are likely to try to make contact with the star write significantly more letters to their idols, in fact they will usually send twice as many letters as other ‘inappropriate’ letter writers, although their attempts to get physically close to their victim may start after only one or two letters. Anyone who writes more than ten letters and keeps on writing for more than a year is potentially dangerous. They don’t write significantly longer letters though; most of these ‘inappropriate’ letters are long by normal standards, with six and a half pages a typical length (and one, in de Becker’s files, running to over two thousand pages).

      The writers who want to marry, have sex with or have children with the celebrity turn out to be less potentially dangerous than those who simply expressed a strong desire to meet the star face-to-face, with no sexual propositions. And while almost a quarter of all writers made threats in their letters, this was found not to influence whether they actually turned up outside the celebrity’s home or office – perhaps the most important finding of the research.

      There were some other interesting conclusions: anyone who writes on regular tablet-sized note paper is less dangerous, anyone who attempts to instil shame into the celebrity is less dangerous and anybody who repeatedly mentions other public figures is not a high level threat.

      The research bore out one of Dietz’s earlier theories: that stalkers who write hate mail are less dangerous than those who write to stars romantically. ‘The person who sends hate mail is achieving their catharsis from putting the note in the mail,’ he said. The fan who believes he is destined to have a romance with the celebrity, on the other hand, will experience nothing but disappointment and rejection, and is more liable to have aggression born of frustration. Male stalkers are more likely to ‘act it out in a violent way’ says Dietz, but adds that this does not mean that women letter writers should be ignored. The same criteria for deciding which ones are likely to attack a celebrity apply to women as well as to men, it is simply that more men match the criteria.

      Dr Dietz is accepted as the top world authority on stalking, and works as a consultant to a number of big American companies, helping them identify potentially dangerous employees. He has appeared as an expert witness at numerous trials, including those of John Hinckley and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and is known to some sections of the American press as ‘the FBI’s premier shrink’. Legend has it that he was the inspiration behind Thomas Harris’s book The Silence of the Lambs. He became fascinated by the criminal mind as a student after reading a book by Britain’s famous forensic pathologist Professor Keith Simpson.

      He sees the rise of celebrity stalking as moving in parallel with the growth of television and video, bringing ever more intimate images of stars into the homes of potentially obsessed fans. It is now possible to replay on video, in the privacy of a bedroom, the exact moment in a film or TV programme when the stalker imagines the star is talking directly to him. It is not hard, for the determined stalker, to track down a star. ‘There’s an entire industry devoted to selling proximity to celebrities. There are books published on how to call and write famous people. In Hollywood there are tours to stars’ homes, and magazines often give overly personal information about stars. And stars themselves often reveal overly personal information in publicity interviews such as talk shows,’ he says.

      In Britain and the rest of Europe, as well as America, a whole new ‘profession’ has been born from the public’s obsession with the famous, and we even have a new word for it: paparazzi. These are photographers who earn their living hanging around stars, always hopeful of a compromising or in some way interesting picture to sell to the ever-hungry newspapers and magazines. Some of them have grown rich from their dedication to hanging around outside nightclubs until the early hours of the morning. While the celebrities claim, perhaps genuinely, to be distressed by this level of media intrusion, there is a peculiarly symbiotic relationship between the two camps. The line between stardom and obscurity is a thin one, easily crossed; celebrities have been known to go back inside a club or hotel when there were no photographers waiting for them, and emerge again at the pop of a flashbulb.

      Professor Dietz says that there has been more celebrity stalking in the last ten years than in the whole of previous show business history: ‘We have more celebrities at risk than ever before. The reason is … because of how visible and personal they become. We have close-ups of every glamorous performance, or even a personal interview about someone’s favourite restaurant or artistic likes. And the more personal and intimate the media portrayal, the more that mentally disordered people will misinterpret this as something personal for them.’

      He has known instances where the mentally ill stalker has proved more adept at locating a celebrity than the police or mental health professionals who were trying to warn the star. The stalker, he explained, may have nothing else to do but pursue the career of the star, filing away every kernel of information they can glean. As Gavin de Becker once ruefully observed, the people he monitors may be unbalanced but they are not idiots: at least they CAN write letters.

      Dr Dietz understands but does not approve of the feelings of reciprocation celebrities have towards their fans. Just as they court the attentions of the media, many stars accept the ‘where would you be without us’ attitude of a large number of fans. They may, as the actor Tom Conti puts it, regard obsessional fans as ‘a complete pain in the butt’, but on another level they feel grateful to their public who have, as they are constantly being reminded, given them the wealth, security and self-esteem that go with fame. What they fail to do, until СКАЧАТЬ