Copyright 1999 by Scott Hays
Magazine: The Los Angeles Times
Topic: Inside Celebrity Obsessions
Byline: Scott Hays

It looks, at first glance, like any other personal letter—a quick scrawl on school notebook paper. You start to read, though, and a macabre sense of recognition rivets you to the page:

Dear Jodie,

There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan. It is for this very reason that I am writing you this letter now . . .

The correspondence—written by John W, Hinckley, Jr. to actress Jodie Foster on the day he tried to kill President Reagan—is one of 1,800 "threatening" and "inappropriate" letters studied in the most thorough examination to date on the delusions that lead people to target and harass public figures.

"If presumably stage people will hand a maitre d' several hundred dollars to sit close to a celebrity during dinner, it shouldn't surprise us that mentally disordered people have a preoccupation with these affairs," said Dr. Paul Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who recently completed the study for the National Institute of Justice.

What he tried to uncover were features that would help predict who would physically approach a celebrity. He studied more than 2,000 variables, including sexual content, the presence of multiple postmarks and whether the letter writer used lined paper or plain paper.

"We didn't try to do the impossible and predict who is likely to attack," Dietz explained. "We tried to predict who is likely to take that first step toward becoming a physical danger. In other words, which letter writers would approach."

Perhaps the most startling finding was that those who write letters containing threats are no more likely to approach a celebrity in person. Most threateners are just "blowing off steam," Dietz said.

"There's a lot of misinformation in the law enforcement and celebrity-protection fields," he said. "Threats are the key distinction on which most people operate. Even federal and state laws make that distinction. But if you were to wait for a threat of harm, you would predict almost none of them."

However, features among letter writers who are likely to approach include a request for a face-to-face meeting and telephoning in addition to writing. Subjects who approach also send a significantly greater number of letters.

Most of the widely publicized threats and attacks on public figures have started out innocently enough—in the form of a fan letter. The star of a hit series may receive up to 20,000 letters a week.

"Falling prey to a celebrity's seductive appeal is normal in this society," said Gavin de Becker, a Los Angeles-based security consultant to the stars. "Unfortunately, what is a mild drug for some people is poison for others."

The letters in Dietz's study were among 140,000 collected since 1981 by de Becker (whose collection of "nut mail" is gaining by 50,000 letters a year.) Most were strange and would strike any reader as inappropriate. Many contained bizarre items like blood, hair, a bedpan, dead animal parts.

One fan of a young singer wrote: "I am afraid I made a mistake when I told your I was your father . . . I was so proud when I thought I was you pop. I guess that means that my daughter ain't your sister either . . . I asked your manager to borrow $10,000. I hope she lets me have it.

Another man wrote to a female celebrity: "(H)ello darling this is youre (sic) New friend . . . We will be soon together for our love honey, I will write and mail lovely photo of myself okay. I will write to you soon. Have a lovely Easter time hoping to correspond . . ."

Still another man who thought he was a cat wrote: "I hate to trouble you with my problems, but I have a few. You see, I'm being harassed by this wall that . . . controls (most of the state) . . . Believe it or not, this wall is trying to frame me and put me in jail . . . Please get in touch with me, because I know who L-7 is."

The one personality trait of a celebrity that attracted most of the serious stalkers was approachability, Dietz said. Those who were obnoxious got more hate mail, while those who were sweet and nice got more serous stalkers.

Television is the conduit from which runs most evils. It provides an illusion of intimacy. Mentally disordered people who are on a different channel than the rest of the world form attachments, which can be dangerous—even fatal—for those who inspire them.

Dietz and his colleagues were able to make a broad psychiatric diagnosis from careful study of the letters. They found that 95% of the letter writers were mentally ill. Of these, a number had the delusion that a celebrity loved them, a condition called erotomania.

"This kind of delusional thinking certainly existed long before television," said Dr. Jonathan H. Segal, a psychiatrist at the Palo Alto Medical Center, who recently published an article on erotomania. "But celebrities seem more accessible these days, and that encourages some people to focus on their lifestyle."

The seriously mentally ill, said Dietz, often fail to reach the "approach" stage. They either head off in the wrong direction or they get arrested along the way. It's the "higher-functioning" mental patients who, in fact, put it all together and carry out their objectives.

Dietz said that of the small number of people who have managed to kill a celebrity, "we're seeing only a tip of the iceberg of killings by people obsessed with celebrities." The most likely victim is typically the subject himself, followed by a family member or friend. Down the list are celebrities. "More deaths are related to this phenomenon than the few publicized celebrity murders." Dietz said.

Dietz, a Newport Beach resident, is the principal consultant for the Threat Assessment Group, a national network of experts who provide various services to law enforcement agencies, government and corporations.

The bulk of his work is as a forensic psychiatrist—an expert witness, if you will—who testifies in criminal and civil trials. He testified at Hinckley's trial and before the grand jury in the Tawana Bradley case.

Because of the nature of his work, Dietz has fallen prey to the same kind of threatening mail that he recently studied. To that end, he has taken certain precautions. He covered his DMV tracks, and he set up as special trust fund to hide property ownership.

"I've made a few enemies," he acknowledged.

Dietz has also designed a screening process based on the information obtained from his seven-year study for the National Institute of Justice. "The idea is to decide which letter should receive further investigative attention," he explained. "But the only way to improve public figure protection is to have a centralized repository of information on people who communicate inappropriately with public figures."

In his study, Dietz and his colleagues successfully classified 80% of the letters as to whether the writers might approached. "We can be quite certain about some of them, but ignorant about most of the rest."

"But from the standpoint of protecting people who receive odd letters," he added, "the most important lesson is not to rely on a threat as an indicator of whether a person is dangerous."

Experts say the rise of stalking cases can be tied to the inability of government to deal with the mentally ill and the growing access to celebrity lives through television, video and cable.

"Present laws have proven woefully inadequate in protecting celebrities and others from their stalkers," said Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim), whose bill that makes it a misdemeanor or felony for any person to commit the crime of stalking "with intent to place that person in reasonable fear of death or great bodily injury" was signed into law earlier this month.

Another bill recently passed by the Legislature allows for the continued hospitalization of those who still pose a hazard to others, even after their prison term has expired.

Celebrity stalking cases are becoming routine, said Nick Gabier, a cultural historian who's working on a project for the Garnett Center for Media Studies.

"Celebrities were once guarded about their private lives," he explained. Now they come into our living rooms via shows like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "Entertainment Tonight." They've become our friends, our neighbors. We feel as though we're entitled to violate their privacy because they willingly violated their own privacy."

This same phenomenon underlies much of what is experienced by a sizable portion of people in this society, Dietz said. The only difference is some people have difficulty editing the real from the unreal, which can turn fame into a deadly game of chance.

"Once we've had a chance to study it even further," he said, "I think we're going to find that this obsession with famous people is prevalent behavior among mental patients.