Rebecca Schaeffer
By: Eliza J.
Tags: Sad, Hollywood, True Crime, Murder, Crime

Rebecca Schaeffer

Twenty-one-year-old model and actress Rebecca Schaeffer was well on her way to becoming a star. By 1989, she had already appeared in several movies and TV shows. The show that launched her career was a sitcom called “My Sister Sam.”

In that show she played a spunky teen who goes to live with her photographer sister in San Francisco. Rebecca had quickly become a favorite of the Seventeen-reading set. Not to mention, the fresh-faced brunette had been on the magazine’s March 1987 cover.

My Sister Sam ended in 1988 after two seasons, but the work kept coming. Rebecca co-starred in the racy big-screen farce Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, which hit theaters in June 1989. She had wrapped the TV movie Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair, about the real-life 1985 hijacking of a cruise liner, with screen legends Eva Marie Saint and Burt Lancaster. Dyan Cannon had just directed her in a movie, The End of Innocence, in which Rebecca played a younger version of Cannon’s character.

She was even said to be in the running for the lead in an upcoming romantic comedy called Pretty Woman.

Star on the Rise

Rebecca was born Nov. 6, 1967, in Eugene, Oregon, to Danna, a writer and teacher, and Benson Rebecca, a psychologist. She was the couple’s only child. The family was dedicated to their Jewish faith and Rebecca even considered becoming a Rabbi at one point. The family was also close, and Rebecca said of them once, “No matter where we are in the world, we are like a three-legged stool.”

When the family moved to Portland, Rebecca attended the prestigious Lincoln High School where she excelled socially and academically. At the age of 14, she was referred to talent agency Troutman Profiles Inc. by her hairdresser, Rick Putro. It wasn’t long before she was featured in department store catalogs modeling outfits for the back-to-school season. Rebecca took to modeling and was determined to progress. The ambitions she once had of becoming a Rabbi were now behind her.

In August 1984, at 16, Rebecca finished an internship in New York City. The city was a good fit for her; she loved the fast pace of life and endless opportunities the city had to offer. Instead of returning to Portland to complete her high school education, Rebecca decided to return to New York.

She would attend the Professional Children’s School while looking for modeling and acting jobs. Not long after moving, Rebecca landed the role of Annie Barnes in the soap opera One Life To Live.

Rebecca had trouble finding modeling jobs due to her height. At five foot, seven inches tall, she was two inches shorter than the average fashion model. So she went instead to Japan, hoping she might have more luck there. Still unsuccessful, Rebecca returned to New York and turned her attentions to acting.

From My Sister Sam

This was a great choice and Rebecca began to settle into the celebrity lifestyle. She was even dating 23-year-old Brad Silberling, a graduate student studying filmmaking at UCLA who would go on to be a successful director. But with fame come fans and Rebecca was no exception.

She began to receive fan mail. Rebecca told Judy Crown, a hairstylist on the set of My Sister Sam, how excited she was about this, but it set off alarm bells in Crown’s mind. She recalled telling Rebecca not to respond to mail or gifts she received from fans as people could be crazy.

Crown told the Television Academy Foundation in an interview that Rebecca was “very beautiful, very sweet, a little bit naive.”

After My Sister Sam was canceled in 1988 Rebecca was cast in Scenes From The Class Struggle In Beverley Hills directed by Paul Bartel. This was a different role for Rebecca as it was a sexy and sophisticated black comedy. This opened up more mature roles for her including an audition for a part in The Godfather III.

The Murder

On the morning of July 18, 1989, Rebecca was waiting for a delivery The Godfather III script. She was scheduled to audition later that day for the then very coveted role of Michael Corleone’s daughter. If all went well, it could change her life.

However, when the doorbell rang at 10:15AM Rebecca wasn’t greeted with a deliveryman but rather a 19-year-old man named Robert John Bardo. He had been obsessed with the actress for three years and had paid a private investigator $300 to find out where she lived. The P.I. got her address from DMV records. This was all perfectly legal, given driver’s license information was public record at the time.

According to sources Rebecca was surprised but politely told Bardo that she was busy and he needed to leave. That’s when Bardo pulled out a gun and shot her.

However, here’s what Bardo said about the incident: “She had this kid voice…sounded like a little brat or something…said I was wasting her time! …Wasting her time! No matter what, I thought that was a very callous thing to say to a fan, you know…I grabbed the door…guns still in the bag…I grab it by the trigger…I come around, and kapow, and she’s like screaming… aaahhh…screaming…why, aaahhh … and it’s like, oh God…”

A neighbor named Richard Goldman heard the two gunshots and two bloodcurdling screams and rushed to her door where he found Rebecca’s body clad in a black robe, twitching in the building’s foyer. He checked her pulse, but found none. Her arms were akimbo and her feet were wedged between the door and its frame. Witnesses saw a young man in a yellow shirt jogging up the Hollywood block. He turned into an alley and disappeared.

Rebecca was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She lingered for 30 minutes before she died. Rebecca’s body was brought back to her native Oregon, for burial.

The Reason

So the glaring question is why did a seemingly random guy kill a rising superstar?

Well, Bardo wasn’t just a random guy. He was an obsessed fan. Bardo was a freshman in high school when he first saw Rebecca in a commercial for My Sister Sam in the summer of 1986. He felt that they were kindred spirits, both shy and genuine, and he started sending her tokens of his ultimately deranged affection. He also wrote her letters — and when she replied to one of them, he took that as his cue to travel from Tuscon, Ariz., to Los Angeles to see her.

Robert John Bardo

He went to the studio and brought flowers and a teddy bear, but never made it through security and he eventually went back home.

“I thought he was just lovesick, which I think he was,” Jack Egger, who was chief of security at The Burbank Studios, later told the LA Times. “He was terribly insistent on being let in. ‘Rebecca Schaeffer’ was every other word. ‘I gotta see her. I love her. If I could just see her for a minute.’”

Bardo’s opinion of Rebecca changed, however, after he watched her in a love scene in Scenes From the Class Struggle. He apparently felt betrayed. So Bardo attempted to buy a gun, but the owner of the shop refused to sell one to him when he found out about Bardo’s history of mental illness. Bardo then asked his brother, Edward, to buy one for him and Edward agreed as long as his brother promised only to use it when they were together for target practice.

Shortly before Bardo boarded a Greyhound Bus headed for L.A., he wrote a letter to his older sister in Knoxville, Tennessee.

In the letter, he wrote: “I have an obsession with the unattainable. I have to eliminate [what] I cannot attain.” He did not specifically mention Rebecca, however.

The day after Bardo murdered Rebecca, he was located in Tucson attempting to kill himself by running in and out of traffic. He was yelling that he had killed Rebecca Schaeffer. Authorities in Tucson arrested Bardo and held him on a one-million-dollar bail. They contacted the LAPD and told them that they were holding Bardo, and faxed his photo over.

LAPD showed the photo to witnesses who had come forward saying they had been approached by a man asking where Rebecca lived the morning she was murdered. Witnesses confirmed it was the same man in the photo.

Bardo would be extradited to California where he would stand trail. His public defender, Stephen Galindo, argued that Bardo was incapable of planning the murder due to mental illness. Bardo’s brother, Edward, added in court that his brother had spent time in a psychiatric hospital when he was younger.

The Trial and Sentencing

Prosecuting Bardo’s trial was Marcia Clark, who would later prosecute OJ Simpson. Clark argued that Bardo could not be simply insane given that he had stalked Rebecca for two years before going on to murder her.

Judge Dino Fulgoni sided with the prosecution. On Oct. 29, 1991, Bardo was convicted of first-degree murder. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Bardo is currently incarcerated at Avenal State Prison in California. In prison, he spends much of his time drawing celebrities. A number of his drawings are available for purchase online. However, on July 28, 2007 Bardo suffered 11 stab and puncture wounds.

“We have a number of high-notoriety cases, so we cannot jump to the conclusion as to whether his notoriety was a factor in the attack,” said prison Sgt. Chris Weathersbee.

Aftermath and Law

While Rebecca’s death was a devastating personal loss for her parents, friends and other loved ones the circumstances of the killing also jolted, first, the Hollywood community and then the entire state of California.

Unhealthy obsessions with famous people remain, disturbingly, all too common, with everyone from Taylor Swift and Keanu Reeves to Kendall Jenner and Sandra Bullock having been targeted by overzealous admirers, some of whom have ended up being arrested for trespassing, burglary and other crimes that fit into a pattern of harassment.

While her death wasn’t the only impetus for action, it wasn’t until after Rebecca’s murder that stalking in and of itself was even classified as a crime.

In 1990, California became the first state to pass an anti-stalking law — in addition to Rebecca, four women had been killed in Orange County the previous year despite having restraining orders in place against men who had been harassing them — and eventually the rest of the country followed suit.

Previously, the only weapon against stalking was a restraining order, which was not always effective. For example, some states require a legally recognizable relationship between the victim and offender (e.g., marriage) for a restraining order to be issued. After 1990 states adopted state anti-stalking statutes but even those are riddled with loop holes that allowed the stalker to walk away with nothing more than a fine.

In an effort to “close the gaps” between individual state laws and to bolster their deterrent effect, Congress passed the Interstate Stalking Punishment and Prevention Act of 1996. The act prohibits stalking across state lines, makes restraining orders issued in one state valid in other states, and prohibits stalking on federal property, for example, post offices, national parks, and military bases. Violations of the act result in five years imprisonment, and twenty years in prison for violations that result in an injury or acts where the offender used a dangerous weapon. Life imprisonment is prescribed for stalking that results in the victim’s death.

The stark reality of the criminal justice system often places a severe constraint on the value of substantive stalking laws, no matter how carefully statutes are written and in spite of the many legislative advances around the United States since 1990.

Rebecca’s Parents

Consider the risks to the victim that accompany the arrest of the offender. Pretrial detention for those charged with stalking offenses is rare. Arrests often escalate violence or lead to retaliation, with or without victim notification of release. In the unlikely event of a trial and conviction, a prison sentence does little to address the mental health treatment needs of most stalkers. Mental illness undermines principles of deterrence. In the end, the burden of fashioning a workable, realistic remedy to avoid future stalking often falls on the victim.

Currently, there are 7.5 million victims of stalking in the United States each year. Moreover, stalking does not discriminate. Stalking knows no color, gender, or sexuality …anyone can be targeted. Beginning in 2004, the month of January became designated as National Stalking Awareness Month. This is all according to the website victimsofcrime.org

It’s hard not to ignore that fact that Bardo was able to easily get access to Rebecca’s address which would allow him to get close to her. This shocked the Hollywood community when they found out anyone could find out where they lived. So an unlikely advocate would step forward.

The Screen Actors Guild got involved in lobbying the state to strengthen privacy protections, and the state subsequently restricted the accessibility of personal information, such as a home address, from the DMV. (According to a state assemblyman, the California Department of Motor Vehicles received 16 million address inquiries in 1988.) Congress passed the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act in 1994, which required all states to do the same.

Gun control also became a hot topic in the wake of Rebecca’s death, and the My Sister Sam cast and crew reunited for a PSA about gun violence.

“It wasn’t hard to get it moving at all,” Pam Dawber, who played Rebecca’s sister on the show, told a Tribune Media reporter in October 1989, “though what is going to be hard is to get the networks to air it. Gun control is fairly controversial, though all we’re saying to people is to prevent handgun violence. Now, how can you argue with that?”

Rebecca’s parents also threw themselves into the fight for stricter gun laws, imploring lawmakers to tighten restrictions on who could get their hands on a firearm, a battle that’s uncannily similar to the one still being waged today. Danna helped launch the lobbying group Oregonians Against Gun Violence in 1990 and went to Washington, D.C., to help lobby for the passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

“We face death every morning,” Benson Schaeffer, Rebecca’s dad, told the Los Angeles Times in October 1991. “Sometimes you’re overcome with despair. You never cease missing the person. The gun issue lets us focus our anger.” (The Brady Bill was eventually enacted in 1993.)

Their main goals didn’t sound particularly extreme. They wanted for all gun sales to have built-in waiting periods, and to have guns only be sold by licensed dealers. “There’s so little we can do about Rebecca’s death,” Benson, a child psychologist, said. “We feel good about doing this. It’s the only public way to say that what happened to Rebecca isn’t all right.”

And in addition to the greater implications of this tragedy, there was, of course, the spectacle of it all: A 21-year-old celebrity, killed by a stalker, at her home, in broad daylight. Terrifying and endlessly compelling.

A portrait immediately emerged of a victim who wasn’t just poised to be a major star, but a person who touched everyone who knew her with her sweet, generous spirit — a portrait that has endured to this day.

While Rebecca’s life was taken so suddenly and tragically, her death brought national attention to the need for better protections for victims of stalking. While we have come a long way since 1990 we still have more to go. Personally I don’t think there’s a one size fits all plan but action needs to be taken that opens up more protections for victims.

You can get involved by supporting your local legislation.

Be sure to check out my podcast Leave The Lights On for episodes like this and more!