“We are making his fantasies come true”: the harrowing case of Madonna’s stalker
At the peaks of her fame, Madonna came face-to-face with the disturbing world of celebrity stalking.
It’s the dark side of fame that can lead to tragic ends… Just how dangerous celebrity obsession can be was violently revealed to the world when Mark David Chapman planned and carried out his infamous assassination of John Lennon in 1980 – nine years later, TV actress Rebecca Schaeffer was shot dead at the entrance of her apartment for the ‘crime’ of having featured in a sexual scene in Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, in the eyes of her killer, Robert John Bardo.
What fuels the contemporary phenomenon of the celebrity stalker? Such hostile targeting can stem from a myriad of disorders, be it the desperate need for intimacy, a grievance of perceiving to have been ‘rejected’ or ‘wronged’ by the objects of their infatuation, or, in the case of Madonna’s stalker, a delusional case of erotomania.
A transient drifter, thought to be from Portland, Oregon, Robert Dewey Hoskins developed a frightening loss of touch with reality, believing that he and the world’s biggest pop star were romantically involved. Such fantastical thinking led Hoskins to travel to Madonna’s Castillo del Lago residence in Hollywood in April 1995. Across three days, Hoskins scaled the perimeter wall of her 3.5-acre property before private security escorted him off the grounds, returning the next day to leer directly at Madonna as she arrived at her front gate after a bike ride.
In a chilling escalation, Hoskins, the day after, called the estate’s gate call-box and spat a string of death threats to the star’s assistant, left a scrawled note on a religious tract declaring, “I love you. You will be my wife for keeps,” before informing security that if Madonna didn’t agree to marry him, he’d “slice her throat from ear to ear.”
Several weeks had passed before Hoskins struck again. Unbeknownst to the stalker, Madonna was away in Florida, but the homeless drifter scaled the wall with a knife in hand in late May, climbed on top of the carport and jumped into her swimming pool. Threatening bodyguard Basil Stephens, two bullets to the arm and hip, was followed by Stephens subduing Hoskins until the authorities arrived. According to Stephens, the shooting was triggered by Hoksins attempting to grab his firearm in the tussle.
Being the capital of the USA’s entertainment industry, California state law pioneered the first legislation cracking down on predatory stalking behaviour in light of Schaeffer’s murder. Hoskins and Madonna would come face-to-face for the last time during the trial in January 1996. “I feel incredibly disturbed that the man who repeatedly threatened my life is sitting across the room from me,” The Washington Post reported the star confessing at court. “I feel we are making his fantasies come true.”
Hoskins was sentenced to ten years in state prison, released to a psychiatric centre after, but remained in and out of trouble with the law, plagued with psychotic episodes and sent back to a secure hospital facility in 2012 after the Los Angeles Police Department discovered Hoskins had begun fixating on actress Halle Berry.
It’s a sad and disturbing clash of very different lives, one pop star’s elevation to incomprehensible levels of adulation inviting a deranged fandom she never asked for, and one of life’s losers seeking some kind of purpose, no matter how selfishly destructive and terrifying.
