The Tragic Murder of Young Actor Rebecca Lucile Schaeffer

On July 18, 1989, 21-year-old actress Rebecca Lucile Schaeffer opened the door to her apartment and found herself face to face with 19-year-old Robert John Bardo, an obsessed fan. Bardo had been stalking Rebecca for three years. He had previously stalked a peace activist named Samantha Smith, but she was killed in a plane crash in 1985. Shortly after Smith’s death, Bardo turned his attention to Rebecca, writing her countless letters, one of which she took the time to answer.

In 1987, he attempted to get on the set of her television show, My Sister Sam to meet her, but Warner Bros. security denied him access. A month later he returned, this time armed with a knife, determined to get past them, but he was once again thwarted. For a while, it seemed this might be the end of it. Bardo abandoned his need to gain Rebecca’s attention and began obsessing over young pop stars such as Debbie Gibson, Madonna, and Tiffany.

However, after My Sister Sam was canceled and Rebecca went on to make the black comedy series Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills in 1989, he found himself once again following her on screen. In one scene of the show, she appears in a sex scene with a male actor. This infuriated Bardo, sending him into a jealous rage and leading him to decide that he had to punish her for what he felt were questionable morals.

When Bardo learned that Arthur Richard Jackson had stalked and stabbed actress Theresa Saldana in 1982 after employing a private investigator to obtain her address, he hired a detective agency in Tucson to find Rebecca’s home address for him. They accessed the DMV in California and gave him the information he sought for a mere $250. Bardo’s brother, not knowing what purpose it was for, helped him purchase a handgun.

This time when Bardo traveled to Los Angeles, he went straight to Rebecca’s neighborhood, milling about the streets to ask locals if she really lived there. Once he determined that he was at the right address, he rang her doorbell and waited for an answer. Inside, Rebecca had been waiting for a script to be delivered for The Godfather Part III, for which she had been preparing to audition. She opened the door and instead found Bardo standing there with the letter and autograph she had sent him previously.

They had a brief conversation and she politely asked him not to visit her private home again. He left and went to a nearby diner for breakfast. An hour later, he returned to her apartment. He said later that she had opened the door with “a cold look on her face” that had set him off. He pulled out the handgun and shot her in the chest at point-blank range. According to him, her only last words were “Why?”

Though Rebecca was rushed to the emergency room at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, the damage was too great to save her. She was pronounced dead thirty minutes after her arrival.

Bardo was arrested the following day in Tucson after motorists notified local police that a man was running in and out of traffic on the interstate. Upon his arrest, he confessed to the murder. It was detailed in his court papers that he had carried a copy of The Catcher in the Rye with him at the time he killed Rebecca, but he claims it was coincidental and in no way meant to mimic the likes of Mark David Chapman or other killers who had the book in their possession. He had tossed the book onto the roof before fleeing the scene.

The case was prosecuted by Marcia Clark, who would later become well known for prosecuting the OJ Simpson case. Bardo was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Though Bardo’s defense made no contest that he had admitted the crime, they claimed an earlier diagnosis of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were factors in the case. In 2007, Bardo was stabbed by another inmate 11 times with a handmade weapon. He was treated for his wounds and returned to confinement.

This murder case resulted in The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994, which forbids the DMV from releasing private addresses to the public. Rebecca’s death was also used in the fight to pass some of the early anti-stalking laws in America. She is further remembered through the movie, Moonlight Mile, directed by Brad Silberling, who she had been dating at the time of her murder. The film is about a man’s grief over the murder of his fiancée and was inspired by his loss of Rebecca.

Shortly after Rebecca’s death, her co-stars on My Sister Sam filmed a public service announcement in her honor. Pam Dawber, Joel Brooks, David Naughton, and Jenny O’Hara all took part in the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence clip.

30 years later, Robert John Bardo, now 51 years old, remains in Avenal State Prison in Kings County, California serving life without parole.