It’s time for another look back through time in
another installment of the Tuesday Timeline.
Today is November 6, and I will warn you ahead of
time...this will not be a story that has a happy ending. You’ll soon figure out why that is the case
as we proceed.
For now, let’s have a look at some of the events
that have taken place on November 6th throughout history.
On this day in...
1528
– Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot on
the land mass that would come to be known as the state of Texas
1789
– Pope Pius the VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in
the United States
1844
– The first constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted
1854
– Composer John Philip Sousa is born in Washington D.C.
1856
– The first work of fiction by author George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life, is submitted for publication
1861
– Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America on
the same day that James Naismith, inventor of basketball is born
1865
– CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender towards the
end of the American Civil War
1869
– The first intercollegiate football game is held with Rutgers defeating the
College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton)
1913
– Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South
Africa
1917
– The Third Battle of Ypres ends in Belgium
1934
– Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley
Authority
1935
– Parker Brothers acquires the patent for the board game Monopoly from
Elizabeth Magie
1941
– Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader, addresses the Soviet Union for only the second
time in his whole reign during World War II
1943
– The city of Kiev is recaptured by the Soviet Red Army during World War II
1944
– The element of plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility
1947
– Meet the Press debuts on television
1962
– The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South
Africa’s racist apartheid policies and calls forth the measure for all UN
states to cease military and economic relations with the nation
1963
– Duong Van Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam following the coup of
November 1 which lead to the death of previous leader Ngo Dinh Diem
1965
– Cuba and the United States reach an agreement to begin airlifting Cubans who
wish to go to the United States
1971
– The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest American
underground hydrogen bomb on Amchitka Island
1977
– The Kelly Barnes Dam fails, killing 39 people in Toccoa, Georgia
1986
– A British International Helicopters Boeing 234LR Chinook crashes east of
Sumburgh Airport killing 45 people
1995
– Art Modell announces that he signed a deal that would relocate the Cleveland
Browns to Baltimore and the team name would change to the Baltimore Ravens
2012
– Barack Obama is re-elected President of the United States
(That last one I added in...and once we know who
won, I’ll update that last fact accordingly).
There are also a slew of celebrity birthdays on
this Election Day Tuesday. Happy
birthday to Mike Nichols, Stonewall Jackson, Johnny Giles, Guy Clark, Sally
Field, Fred Penner, Sidney Blumenthal, Glenn Frey, Nigel Havers, Michael
Cunningham, Catherine Crier, Maria Shriver, Cam Clarke, Siobhan McCarthy, Lori
Singer, Trace Beaulieu, Bruce Holland Rogers, Michael Cerveris, Craig Goldy
(Dio), Kerry Conran, Paul Gilbert, Peter DeLuise, Caesar Meadows, Kelly
Rutherford, Alfred Williams, Ethan Hawke, Thandie Newton, Rebecca Romijn, Zoe
McLellan, Taryn Manning, Zak Morioka, Adam LaRoche, Lamar Odom, and Emma Stone.
Today’s featured subject is of a woman who had she
lived would be celebrating her 45th birthday right now.
She was born on November 6, 1967.
Tragically, she never saw her twenty-second
birthday. She was cut down in the prime
of her life by a man who was so obsessed with her that he would do anything in
order to be near her. When the affection
was rebuffed, it was the beginning of the end.
This is the tragic story of Rebecca Schaeffer.
To be completely honest with most of you, I didn’t
really hear of Rebecca until after she died.
I was a bit too young to really remember her from any of her film or
television projects. It wasn’t until
after I saw some clips of her in action that I really began to understand who
she was, and why her death was so tragic.
Anyway, as I mentioned before, Rebecca Lucile
Schaeffer was born on November 6, 1967 in the city of Eugene, Oregon. She was the only child of a writer and a
child psychologist. She attended Lincoln
High School (graduating in 1985), and initially she had plans to become a
rabbi.
However, those plans were soon placed on the
backburner permanently as Rebecca developed another love...the love of
performance art.
When Rebecca was still in high school, she began
to do some modelling for various magazines and advertisements, and was even
cast in a few television commercials.
She also landed a role as an extra in a made for television movie. After graduating from high school, she moved
to New York City in an attempt to make it big as an actress. It didn’t take her too long to get work. She played a small role in the television
soap opera “One Life to Live” as Annie Barnes in 1985, followed by an
appearance on the cover of Seventeen
magazine.
The following year, Rebecca Schaeffer tested for a
role in a brand new sitcom that was set to air on Monday nights for the
1986-1987 television season.
That show was “My Sister Sam”.
On the show, Rebecca played the role of Patti
Russell, a teenage girl who moves in with her sister, Sam (Pam Dawber) in San
Francisco, California. The series also
starred Jenny O’Hara, Joel Brooks, and David Naughton. It debuted on CBS on October 6, 1986.
The show’s first year was a moderate success,
airing on Monday nights. But during the
period between the show’s first and second seasons, CBS made the decision to
move the show to Saturday nights. Given
that at the time, NBC was airing “The Facts of Life” and “The Golden Girls” on
Saturdays, “My Sister Sam” could not compete against the huge ratings that the
NBC Saturday Night line-up of comedies, and it was cancelled in April 1988,
with half of the episodes of the second season unaired.
TRIVIA: When USA Network bought the syndication
rights to the series, the unaired episodes aired for the first time on that
network, and all 44 taped episodes were eventually shown.
With the show wrapping up production in 1988,
Schaeffer found herself looking for work once more. After having a role in “Radio Days” (which to
Rebecca’s disappointment was mostly left on the cutting room floor), she won
the role of Zandra in the film “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills”,
directed by Paul Bartel. The film role
was Rebecca’s first in a major motion picture, and her performance was
critically praised. Many people deemed
it to be Rebecca’s breakout role, and although her role was a minor one, she
really seemed to shine in it.
The movie was released on June 3, 1989. Little did Rebecca know that just weeks
later, she would end up dead.
You see, when the movie was first released, a man
by the name of Robert John Bardo watched her performance and was not happy with
her adult performance, including scenes of her in bed with a male actor. He was enraged that Schaeffer had become “another
Hollywood whore”, and was determined to make her pay for shedding the wholesome
image that Schaeffer had presented on the sitcom “My Sister Sam”.
The truth is that Robert John Bardo had begun
stalking Rebecca shortly after “My Sister Sam” debuted in 1986. The scary thing was that Schaeffer wasn’t his
first obsession. When Bardo was just in
his teens, he developed an obsession with child peace activist Samantha Smith. But when Smith was killed in a plane crash in
1985, his attention soon diverted towards the then 19-year-old Rebecca.
Between 1986 and 1988, Bardo reportedly sent
Schaeffer dozens of fan letters, each one showcasing his love for the young
starlet. And at least once, his letter
got a response from an employee of Rebecca’s fan service, which fueled his
obsession even further.
Bardo’s obsession with Schaeffer intensified in
1987 when he actually took a trip to the California studios where “My Sister
Sam” was taped, hoping that he would end up meeting her in person. He tried twice to get inside the studios, but
both times he was stopped by security.
His second attempt was particularly alarming as he had arrived carrying
a knife with him. After his second
attempt to meet Schaeffer, Bardo returned to his home state of Arizona and
began to put all of his energies into other starlets, in particular the teenage
breakout acts of 1987, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson.
But by 1989, Rebecca Schaeffer was back on the
radar of Robert John Bardo, and not in the loving, caring, adoring way that he
was three years earlier. Bardo made
plans to take care of Rebecca once and for all, and he did this by doing a
little bit of detective work into trying to track down her whereabouts.
He consulted a private detective agency and paid
the agents $250 to find out where Rebecca was living via the California
Department of Motor Vehicles database.
Once he retrieved the most recent address listed for Schaeffer, he
arrived back in California and made a beeline towards the apartment building
where Rebecca was reportedly living. The
date was July 18, 1989. After asking
random people on the street if she really lived there, and certain that he was
at the right spot, he rang the doorbell of Rebecca’s apartment.
When Rebecca opened the door, Bardo immediately
showed her the autograph and letter that she had sent him, and tried to explain
how much he idolized her and loved her, but Schaeffer was uncomfortable and
asked Bardo to leave and not come back.
Bardo left the apartment for about an hour and
returned. When Rebecca opened the door a
second time and saw Bardo again, she gave him a really cold look (according to
Bardo). It was at that moment that Bardo
pulled out a handgun (which had been purchased by his brother, as Bardo was too
young at the time), aimed it towards Rebecca and shot her at point-blank range.
Bardo fled the scene after Rebecca screamed in
pain. A neighbour immediately called for
help, and paramedics rushed her to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but it was too
late. Half an hour after she was shot,
Rebecca Schaeffer passed away at the age of 21.
As for her killer, Robert John Bardo was arrested
the next day in Tuscon, Arizona, on July 19, 1989.
In his trial, Bardo was tried by prosecutor Marcia
Clark (who would make an even bigger splash during the O.J. Simpson murder
trial of 1995), and was convicted of capital murder. He now is serving a life sentence without any
possibility of parole.
As for Rebecca Schaeffer, a promising career was
cut short that warm July morning in 1989.
At the time of her death, she was reportedly planning on auditioning for
the 1990 film “The Godfather III”. Her
last film appearance was a posthumous one, playing the role of Stephanie in the
1990 movie, aptly titled “The End of Innocence”.
Her former “My Sister Sam” co-workers were shocked
and saddened by the loss of their friend, and after Schaeffer’s murder, the
four surviving members of the cast teamed up in a public service announcement
about violence prevention, in memory of Schaeffer. And film director Brad Silberling (who was
dating Schaeffer at the time of her death) released the film “Moonlight Mile”
in 2002, which was inspired by Schaeffer’s murder.
Although the death of Rebecca Schaeffer was a
tragic loss, I should note that her death was not completely in vain. There were some major changes to various laws
that has helped contribute to saving and protecting the lives of other people
(both famous people and regular civilians).
For one, after Schaeffer’s death, California laws were amended in 1994
with the passage of the “Driver’s Privacy Protection Act”, which forbade the
DMV from releasing any personal information about anybody, especially private
addresses. Anti-stalking laws were also
made tighter and consequences were made much more severe following Schaeffer’s
death.
I suppose in some ways, Rebecca Schaeffer’s legacy
does live on through the passage of these laws.
It’s just a shame that she had to lose her life at the hands of an obsessed
fan for that to happen.
Rebecca Schaeffer would have been 45 today. I often wonder what her career would have
been like had she lived. Sadly, we’ll
never know.
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