‘Obsessive Fan’ Seized in Tucson in Actress’ Slaying

An unemployed fast-food worker described by authorities as an “obsessive fan” of slain actress Rebecca Schaeffer was charged here Wednesday with her murder after police found him running in traffic on a Tucson, Ariz., highway one day after the bizarre killing.

Authorities said Robert John Bardo, 19, of Tucson had just gotten off a bus in the downtown area when he walked onto Interstate 10 and began dodging fast-moving cars.

After he was taken into custody on a freeway off-ramp, Bardo allegedly made statements to arresting officers concerning the killing of Schaeffer, who was shot in the chest at her apartment house in the Fairfax District on Tuesday morning.

Several Tucson officers, including Police Chief Peter Ronstadt, the brother of pop singer Linda Ronstadt, apprehended Bardo.

“He was passive and quiet with the officers,” said Tucson Police Sgt. Paul Hallums.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said the evidence that led to charges being filed against Bardo included statements he had made to Tucson authorities.

“The evidence shows that Bardo was an obsessive fan of Miss Schaeffer,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Savitt said.

At a late afternoon press conference, Los Angeles Police Homicide Detective Dan Andrews said Bardo “made statements that he was involved in this murder. I don’t want to say he confessed, but he implicated himself, for sure.”

Andrews said authorities received a telephone call at 2 a.m. Wednesday from a woman friend of the suspect in the Knoxville, Tenn., area who said she believed Bardo was “involved in the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer.”

The detective said the woman told police that Bardo had a video collection of Schaeffer’s television work and authorities found one of Schaeffer’s publicity photos in his possession.

A source close to the police investigation said Bardo’s alleged infatuation with Schaeffer appeared to be similar to John W. Hinckley Jr.’s obsession with Academy Award-winning actress Jody Foster.

It was Hinckley’s desire to get Foster’s attention, psychiatrists said, that spurred him to attempt to kill former President Ronald Reagan.

“He (Bardo) was stalking her (Schaeffer),” the source said. “He apparently let it be known to somebody that he was going to deal with this woman.” Schaeffer, 21, who co-starred in the television series “My Sister Sam,” was shot in the chest at close range Tuesday morning when she opened the security door at her apartment house on North Sweetzer Avenue. Neighbors heard a gunshot and screams and saw a young man running away.

The gunman was described as between 20 and 30 years old, about 5 feet 7, with curly brown hair. He was wearing a yellow shirt, jeans and floppy sandals, according to Los Angeles police.

When Bardo was apprehended at about 9 a.m. Wednesday, Tucson police said he was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans and sandals.

Bardo was initially held by Tucson police for a misdemeanor offense--walking onto a freeway--while authorities sent his photograph to Los Angeles.

Authorities apparently attempted to see if Bardo matched the description of the gunman, who had been seen loitering outside Schaeffer’s residence for about four hours before Tuesday morning’s shooting.

Neighbors said the gunman showed the actress’s photograph to pedestrians, wanting to know where she lived.

“He stopped me on the street, showed me a picture and asked me if I’d seen her in the neighborhood,” said neighbor Irene Tishkoff. “I just looked at him and said, ‘What?’ and I kept on walking. He was in his early 20s, bookish-looking with glasses, and was wearing a yellow shirt.”

Los Angeles police homicide investigators Frank Boland and Paul Coulter flew to Tucson on Wednesday afternoon to interview Bardo. But evidence already accumulated was sufficient, prosecutors here said, to immediately file a felony arrest warrant charging Bardo with one count of murder.

“There is other evidence he is a fan, other than that found on him at the time of his arrest and other than what he said,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter A. Bonzanich said.

Bonzanich said that special circumstances that could lead to the death penalty against Bardo had not been filed at this time.

“However, if such evidence is developed in the future, we certainly will allege (this) if appropriate. . . . It’s a fast-breaking case so it will take us a while for the police to contact all the witnesses.”

Bardo was unemployed and living at home at the time of his arrest. He had previously worked at several fast-food outlets in the Tucson area.

Gloria White, an assistant manager at a Jack-in-the-Box on North Campbell Avenue in Tucson, said that Bardo worked there earlier this year but that he never mentioned any interest in Hollywood actresses.

“We really didn’t talk that much,” White said.

But she added that Bardo could not take the pressure of working at the grill and that she had to send him home a couple of times.

The suspect’s father, Phillip Bardo of Tucson, expressed shock at the arrest, but declined to discuss the case or talk about his son’s whereabouts in recent days. He said he was waiting to talk with police.

The teen-ager recently had passed an equivalency test to get his high school diploma, according to his father, and was hoping to land a better job.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, Schaeffer’s parents arrived from their home in Portland, Ore., and met with police at the Wilshire Division station.

Benson Schaeffer, a clinical psychologist, comforted his wife, Dana, a writer who was weeping behind sunglasses as she entered the station.

The actress, who recently appeared in the film “Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills,” left home at age 16 to pursue a modeling career in New York. After moderate success, she moved to Los Angeles in 1986, when she was selected for a lead role in the CBS sitcom “My Sister Sam,” which starred Pam Dawber.

Friends who had been in recent contact with the actress said she had never mentioned that anyone was harassing or stalking her.

Barbara Lusch, a 31-year-old actress from Burbank who described herself as Schaeffer’s best friend, said she talked to her just over an hour before the shooting.

“I think I was the last person she talked to,” Lusch said. “We talked about the day (ahead). We were going to go out that night to see Richard Marx at the Roxy.”

Times staff writers Charisse Jones in Portland, Ore.; George Ramos in Tucson, Ariz.; and David Ferrell, John H. Lee and Darrell Dawsey in Los Angeles contributed to this story.