Being a celebrity can bring you fame and fortune, but safety is often not included in the package. We know all too well the tragic fates of musicians like John Lennon and Dimebag Darrell, actors like Sharon Tate, and even fashion moguls like Gianni Versace. But there are many other celebrities who have had their lives targeted. They were just lucky enough to walk away unscathed and not become cautionary tales about the dangers and pitfalls of fame.
10. Debbie Harry
Debbie Harry had an ominous encounter in the early 70s before she found success with her band Blondie . Here story , as she told it in a 1989 interview:
“I was trying to hail a cab in the Lower East Side Village in New York City, and it was a little late… A little white car pulls up and a guy offers me a ride… he was really pushy and asked where I was going. It was only a couple of blocks away, and he said, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a ride… I got in the car, it was summer, and all the windows were up except for about an inch and a half at the top.’ … I realized there was no door handle, no window handle, nothing. The inside of the car was completely stripped… I was really nervous. I put my hand through the little crack, reached around, and opened the car from the outside. As soon as he saw it, he tried to turn the corner really fast, and I flew out of the car and landed in the middle of the street.”
Harry said she hadn't thought about it for years until she looked at the newspaper one day and saw the face of the man who had tried to kidnap her that night. It was none other than Ted Bundy .
Not all of them this story is convincing , because it doesn't fit with the timeline we have of Bundy. But we don't know his exact movements at the time. It's entirely possible he made a trip to New York. Or maybe it was some other creep trying to kidnap a young woman, but Debbie Harry has stuck to her guns for decades and still insists she almost fell victim to America's most notorious serial killer.
9. Russell Crowe
Back in the distant year 2000 came out "Gladiator" , which turned Russell Crowe into the biggest star on the planet. Then, when awards season rolled around, he was unsurprisingly one of the guests of honor, as the actor received more than his fair share of praise for his performance as the film's leading man.
But there was a strange and sinister sight when Crowe made his way down all those red carpets. He was always surrounded by undercover agents. Most of the time they were FBI agents, but other times they were undercover cops or even detectives Scotland Yard Was the actor in danger?
Well, the FBI certainly thought so. They provided Russell Crowe with protection for nearly four years because they were afraid he might be targeted by al-Qaeda. Crowe was warned of the threat ahead of the 2001 Oscars. That was a few months before 9/11, when the world learned the name Osama bin Laden. At the time, the actor had no idea who he was, but the terrorist knew all about Russell Crowe, and the FBI learned of an al-Qaeda plot to target Crowe and other high-profile actors as part of a “plan for cultural destabilization.” » .”
Ultimately, there were no attempts on Russell Crowe's life, but he did the smart thing and got his own private security when the FBI was no longer around.
8. Bjork
Stalkers pose a clear and present danger to celebrities. By now, we know all too well that their obsessions can lead to violence and even murder, especially when they finally realize that their fantasies will never come true.
In 1996, Icelandic singer Bjork had a close encounter with a stalker-killer named Ricardo Lopez Over the previous three years, Lopez had developed a crush on the singer, which turned into an obsession and, ultimately, a belief that they were destined to be together.
The turning point for Lopez came in 1996, when Björk began a relationship with British music producer and DJ Goldie. As details of their affair hit the papers, the stalker became increasingly enraged, to the point that he finally decided he would kill Björk to make sure no one could have her.
On September 12, he sent her a letter bomb filled with sulfuric acid, hidden inside a hollowed-out book. Lopez then recorded himself one last time and, with Björk's music playing in the background, ended his by yourself.
Luckily, geography saved the singer. While she was living in London at the time, her stalker mailed a bomb to Florida. American police uncovered his plan and informed the English authorities in time to intercept the deadly package.
7. Shirley Temple
As a child star in Hollywood, Shirley Temple was subjected to abuse, but even by those standards, her dangerous encounter with her mentally unstable and orphaned mother stands out.
In 1939, 10-year-old Temple performed a rendition of " "Good night" for a live radio show on CBS in Hollywood. But one of the participants was not a fan. According to Temple, a woman in the audience, " pulled out a rather large pistol " and aimed it at the star child, but luckily she was quickly subdued before she could pull the trigger.
Decades later, Temple explained that she learned the woman had lost her daughter ten years earlier, on the very same day that Shirley Temple was born . So she became convinced that her daughter's soul was trapped in Temple's body, so by killing the child star, she would free her daughter's soul. In her autobiography, Shirley Temple concluded that "this story showed up "understandable to me."
6. Joss Stone
Back in 2013, two men named Kevin Liverpool and Junior Bradshaw were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, including life imprisonment for "masterminding" Liverpool. Their defense team tried to argue that their plan was so clumsy and its execution so " disorderly ", which does not deserve life in prison. It would be almost comical if it weren't for the fact that the duo tried to rob and kill R&B singer-songwriter Joss Stone.
In the early hours of May 13, 2011, two men got into their Fiat Punto and drove out of Manchester, heading for Stone's remote home in rural Devon. They were convinced that the singer had a million pounds in cash in a safe at home, so they planned to rob her, chop off her head and dump her body in a river.
On the way, the would-be killers had a car accident but decided to continue. Then, at another location, they got lost and had to ask road among local residents . They also made no attempt to hide the tools and weapons, which were lying in plain sight in the backseat of the car. Luckily, the duo acted so suspiciously that several of Stone's neighbors alerted the police, who intervened and arrested them before they could carry out their grisly plan.
Inside the car, the authorities found everything they needed to convict - samurai sword , a knife, hammers, a chisel, duct tape, garbage bags, gloves, masks, and even handwritten notes about the murder of Joss Stone. They couldn't have made it any more obvious if they had brought a notarized confession.
5. Monica Seles
April 30, 1993 is one of, if not the most infamous date in tennis history. It was the quarterfinal match of the Citizens' Cup in Hamburg, Germany, between Monica Seles and Magdalena Maleeva. During a break between games, Seles approached the court when she felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her back. In front of the entire crowd, a man from the audience ran up to her and inflicted on her hit in the back with a 10-inch knife.
Luckily for Seles, she heard a scream and turned to look just as the man plunged the knife into her, the blade only going about half an inch between her spine and her left shoulder blade. Any deeper and she could have been paralyzed or even killed. Seles was taken to the hospital, where her injuries were considered serious, but not life-threatening .
At first, people feared that the attack on the tennis player might be a political assassination, since Seles was from Yugoslavia and had already received threats related to the Yugoslav wars. But as it turned out, her attacker was a mentally unstable German named Gunther Parche , who was obsessed with Steffi Graf, Monica Seles' arch-rival. He wanted to defeat Seles so that Graf could become the No. 1 ranked player again.
4. Larry Flynt
March 6, 1978 publisher Hustler Larry Flynt and his lawyer walked out of a courthouse in Lawrenceville, Gwinnett County, Georgia, after an obscenity trial, one of many he has faced over the decades. Suddenly, the air was filled with gunshots as Flynt and his lawyer collapsed on the sidewalk. America's most famous pornographer had been shot in the lower spine and abdomen, leaving him permanently partially paralyzed and was in severe pain. The sniper escaped alive, but Larry Flynt was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
Flint had many enemies, so the attempt on his life was not particularly surprising, but the identity of his shooter remained a mystery for more than a decade and a half. It was not until 1994 that the serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin confessed to the crime. Franklin was a white supremacist who committed up to 20 racially motivated murders. As for the attempt on Flynt's life, Franklin claimed he became enraged when he saw an interracial couple having sex on a Hustler , and decided that Flint should pay.
Franklin was never charged with Larry Flynt's murder because he was already on death row for other crimes. In a strange twist, as Franklin prepared to be executed in 2013, Flynt began speaking out on behalf of the man who left him in a wheelchair, calling for clemency. because He was against the death penalty.
3. Bob Marley
The mid-1970s were a time of turmoil in Jamaica, as violence between supporters of the country’s major political parties became increasingly common. 1976 was a crucial election year, and tensions between the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) and the opposing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) were at an all-time high. In an attempt to defuse the powder keg, the government planned a concert to bring much-needed unity to the people. It was called Smile Jamaica and was scheduled to take place on December 5, 1976 at National Heroes Park in Kingston.
Bob Marley was the headliner. Although he insisted he was apolitical because the concert was organized by the ruling government, many people saw his participation as tacit support for the PPP.
Two days before the concert, Marley and his band were in his home studio taking a break between rehearsals when two cars containing seven armed men pulled up to his house and opened fire. fire to everyone inside. Four people were injured. The band's manager, Don Taylor, and employee Louise Griffin were shot in the legs and torso. Marley's wife, Rita, was shot in the head, although the bullet only grazed her scalp and left her bloody but alive. Marley himself was only shot in the arm, as his manager pulled him down at just the right moment to avoid a more lethal blow. Despite the attempt on his life, Bob Marley still performed at a concert two days later.
2. Andy Warhol
In the 1960s, one of the hottest spots in the art world was Factory in New York, the studio of pop art sensation Andy Warhol. It was the kind of place where something interesting was always happening. People were constantly coming and going, most of them artists who wanted to see and be seen.
One of them was Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist who was struggling to make a name for herself and was still a minor player in the New York art scene. But she wrote a play and kept pestering Warhol to produce it until he finally agreed to read it. Presumably, he did this only to silence her, and promptly tossed the manuscript into a dark corner of his studio and promptly forgot about it.
Unfortunately for him, Solanas suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, so after Warhol ignored several requests, which later turned into threats, to return her manuscript, she became convinced that he was trying to steal her work. And so it was that on June 3, 1969, Solanas appeared on Factory" , armed with a .32-caliber Beretta pistol, and shot Andy Warhol and a London gallery owner named Mario Amaya, before calmly leaving the building.
The ordeal nearly killed Warhol. Solanas shot him twice, and the bullets pierced him. stomach, spleen, lungs and esophagus. He was rushed to the hospital and even briefly declared dead before doctors were able to revive him. After months of recovery, he had to wear a corset for the rest of his life.
1. George Harrison
Even to this day, four decades later, John Lennon's death at the hands of Mark David Chapman remains the most infamous celebrity murder in history, but that notoriety has led many people to forget that another Beatle almost suffered the same fate.
On December 30, 1999, George Harrison and his wife Olivia were at their home, Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames, when a 34-year-old man named Michael Abram broke into their home and attacked them. both .
He first attacked Harrison, who had come out of the bedroom to investigate the noise he had heard when Abram broke in. The two struggled briefly, but Abram was younger and stronger, so he jumped on top of Harrison and several times stabbed him in the chest and torso. Olivia came to her husband's aid and hit Abram with a fire poker as hard as she could, prompting her attacker to dismount Harrison and lunge at her. Not one to go down without a fight, Olivia grabbed a heavy lamp and continued to hit Abram while he choked her until he passed out. It was at this point that two police officers entered the house, followed by paramedics, who rushed George Harrison to the hospital in time to save his life.
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