Top 10 Alleged Real Life Celebrity Stalkers

Jack Jordan’s obsession started with the 1988 film "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” in which Thurman plays the goddess Venus. This means that his obsession had been brewing for a long time before he first tried to contact the actress in 2005. In the following years, he not only reportedly sent her disturbing letters and pictures, but also repeatedly came to the apartment where she lived. According to Jordan, he thought he was pursuing a perfectly legal way of trying to meet and marry her, but she didn’t think it was romantic! He was sentenced to 3 years’ probation in 2008, but was arrested again in 2010 after he allegedly violated the terms of his restraining order for trying to contact Thurman.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s stalker was not only insanely creepy, but also terribly persistent. Dante Michael Soiu allegedly stalked the actress for 17 years, and during this time, he sometimes reportedly sent her five letters a day, not to mention a cookbook, jewelry, clothing, boxes of pornography and a sexy toy that had “because I love you” written on the side. He even tracked down her parents and went to their house. Even scarier, he allegedly wanted to use “God’s scalpel” to “cut the sin” out of her! In 2001, he was declared legally insane, but that didn’t stop him. In 2009, he started writing to her again, leading to yet another trial. In 2016, Soiu was found not guilty in court.

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Victim: Erin Andrews
Erin Andrews is a sportscaster and television personality who hosts Dancing with the Stars and FOX College Football. In 2008, when she worked for ESPN, a man named Michael David Barrett started following her across the country, staying in the same hotels as her and taking videos of her through altered peepholes in the doors of her rooms — including videos of her in the nude. In 2009, one of the videos was famously posted online. But at least something good came out of it: Andrews was able to help promote proposed federal anti-stalker legislation, while Barrett was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

Margaret Mary Ray was first arrested after failing to pay the Lincoln Tunnel toll, while she was driving talk show host David Letterman’s car, which she had stolen from his driveway. She also claimed that she was his wife and that her three-year-old son was his child. Over the next few years, she repeatedly broke into his home, insisting that he was her husband. Dave generally treated it like a joke on TV, but he also expressed deep compassion for the woman. He even refused to press charges, though she did spend time in both prison and mental institutions. Sadly, she eventually committed suicide.

Ricardo Lopez’s obsession began innocently enough. He started sending her fan letters and writing about her in his written diary, citing her as his artistic muse. He then switched to a video diary, talking repeatedly about the singer over the course of several months. His obsession was creepy but not dangerous – that is, until he found out about Bjork’s relationship with Goldie, after which he got mad, and built a letter bomb made with sulfuric acid. After mailing it to her, he went home and filmed his own suicide. Luckily for Bjork, his body was found along with details about the bomb before the package could reach her.

When Dawnette Knight developed an obsession with “Fatal Attraction” star Michael Douglas, his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones got caught in the crossfire. Knight sent a series of letters to Douglas, claiming that she was his lover and eventually saying that she wanted to chop his wife Catherine into chunks to feed to her dogs. Now that’s a fatal attraction if there ever was one! Not surprisingly, Knight was ultimately charged with stalking and sentenced to three years in prison.

Born Sandra May McIntyre, Paula Goodspeed was so enamored withAmerican Idol judge Paula Abdul that she legally changed her first name, tried to copy Abdul’s style and eventually auditioned for American Idol. When Goodspeed was dismissed from the show, though, her obsession darkened. Over the next three years, Goodspeed repeatedly called Abdul, visited her and sent her over 100 letters. And then one day, Goodspeed parked her car outside Abdul’s house and committed suicide by overdosing on prescription drugs. It was a sad case of fan worship gone wrong.

Robert Dewey Hoskins nursed an obsession with Madonna for years, and followed her all across California in the early ‘90s. He threatened that he would either marry her or "slash her throat from ear to ear." Eventually, her bodyguards were forced to shoot him when he climbed over the fence of her house. He survived the gunshots, was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison—but in 2012, he escaped from a mental institution, and Madonna’s safety was at risk again. Luckily, he was caught before he could approach the singer.

Robert John Bardo’s obsession with Rebecca Schaeffer is one of the darkest ones on our list. He obsessed over the young actress for three years in the ‘80s, writing her continuous fan mail and trying to break onto the set of her show, My Sister Sam. He eventually hired a detective agency to find out where she lived and used the information to track her daily habits. In 1989, after being angered by a sex scene she did on the big screen, he visited her apartment – twice in the same day. The first visit culminated in an autograph, but the second visit ended with Schaeffer’s death – as Bardo shot and killed her when she opened the door. This was certainly a terrible tragedy, but at least Bardo was quickly caught and sentenced to life in prison.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable, or in this case, dishonorable, mentions:
Thomas Brodnicki
Victim: Selena Gomez

Dana Martin
Victim: Justin Bieber

Father David Ajemian
Victim: Conan O'Brien

Joshua Corbett
Victim: Sandra Bullock

Matthew Hooker
Victim: Nicole Kidman

It was after watching her in “Taxi Driver” that John Hinckley, Jr. decided to follow actress Jodie Foster when she started attending Yale University, so he made the move to Connecticut. He took it as far as enrolling in a writing class and slipping notes under the actress’ door. When she proved unresponsive, he decided that the only way to win Foster's love was to assassinate the then-President of the United States Jimmy Carter. When that failed – and after he was arrested on a firearms charge – Hinckley made an attempt on new president Ronald Reagan – whom he shot at six times outside a Washington, D.C. Hotel. The president was badly wounded – but survived - and Hinckley was placed in a mental institution, where he remains as of early 2016.

Do you agree with our list? Which celebrity stalker story scares you the most? For more interesting Top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.