Celebrity Stalkers

Some weeks ago, I woke up to the news about the arrest of Miley Cyrus' 53 year old stalker.  And some months before that, there was an even crazier news about Paula Abdul's stalker committing suicide right outside her house.  This made me wonder how far these stalker go (besides commit suicide) to follow the celebrities they are obsessed with and if technology has anything to do with it.  I came across some stories of cuckoo stalkers going after famous celebrities:

Halle Berry had a stalker who sent her an engagement ring and other inappropriate gifts.  He said God told him to marry Halle and claimed that Halle herself came to him in his dreams. 

Next, Catherine Zeta-Jones had a 32 year old woman follower.  She was not a fan of Catherine's but was in love with Catherine's husband, Michael Douglas.  This motivated her to sen threatening letters to the actress and described there how she would cut her into little pieces and feed her to the dogs.  She also knew the name of their nanny and the layout of their house.

Third is the story of Anna Kournikova's stalker who swam naked toward her Miami beach estate.  But the guy got arrested when he got out onto the pool deck of the wrong house.  While being arrested, he shouted, "Anna! Save me!"  He also sent Kournikova explicit letters and emails and had Anna's name tattooed on his right bicep.

And then there is the most bothersome stalker story of all time - Jody Foster's stalker who moved in order to live near her when the actress went to Yale University.  He slipped poems and messages under her door.  But when these strategies failed, he decided on a plot to assassinate the then newly elected Ronald Reagan in order to get Jody Foster's attention.

The above stories, except for Jody Foster's, happened some time between 200-2004.  The more recent stories of celebrity stalking however is showing to be more sophisticated and high-tech.  For example, a 27 year old woman from New Mexico took celebrity stalking to new high-tech heights by using her company's state of the art computers to hack into Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington's mobile phone records.  The woman works at Sandia National Laboratories, a company that does weapons research and testing.  She used the computers at her workplace to gain access to Bennington's Verizon phone, obtaining the list of his dialed numbers and copies of pictures taken with the phone's camera.

Also recently, Tila Tequila's twitter account got hacked and creepy messages was posted such as, "Tila Tequila is dead.  I just broke into her house, killed her and her dog.  Logged onto Twitter to tell you guys." 

The life in Hollywood isn't as glamorous and fun after all.  It still has it's down/creepy side.  Although technology has most of the time helped celebrities in propagating their popularity it apparently is not always their friend.  It also works against them in times like this one.