A Lady With a Problem

Toni Attell is talented, witty, beautiful and afraid.

For the past 18 years she’s been stalked by a man who, she says, has threatened her life and ruined her career.

A ringing telephone or a knock at the door sends shivers through her, knowing he’s out there somewhere, waiting for an opportunity to. . . .

To what?

That’s the question, Attell says, that preys on her mind. The man has a history of violence and admits to psychiatric problems.

She says he’s smashed the windows of her home and her car, has tried to assault her and has twice brandished weapons in public.

An actress, mime and nightclub comedian, Attell’s fear of the stalker has caused her to leave her home in San Francisco, where the stalking began, and to virtually abandon all public appearances.

She moved to L.A., but he’s followed her here, writing letters to her through her agent (the Screen Actor’s Guild gave him the agent’s name) and trying, so far without success, to meet with her while posing as a producer.

Attell feels he knows her telephone number and has been calling and hanging up. She prays that he doesn’t know where she lives.

Police have been unable to do anything about him because there is no proof of a crime having been committed. But two months ago, Attell was granted a restraining order that commands the stalker to leave her alone.

For purposes of this column, we’ll call him Rogers.

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Attell was once a familiar figure in San Francisco both as a stand-up comic and a mime, an art form she mastered after years of study here and abroad.

In 1978, she was playing a club in the Bay Area called the Boarding House, doing an act that required audience participation. A man she later knew as Rogers, a scruffy, seemingly amiable, hippie type, volunteered.

Later, he signed up for acting and mime classes Attell was teaching at her home on weekends and appeared often at clubs where she was performing.

He was a fan, she assumed, and nothing more.

Then, late one evening, Attell says, Rogers showed up at her home drunk, said he was afraid to drive and asked her to sober him up.

Looking back on the incident, Attell realizes it was probably a mistake. “It was a different time,” she says, bothered by her remembered gullibility. She’s a slim, dark-eyed woman with the nervous mannerisms of someone who is very afraid. “We trusted people back then.”

She let Rogers sleep on her couch but woke up before dawn with him crawling into her bed. She ordered him out, he left and she thought the incident was closed. It wasn’t.

Attell says he showed up at other clubs where she was performing, fought with her boyfriend, disrupted the show and, at one point, brandished what appeared to be a knife.

Later, he crashed a party at her home and, Attell says, dragged her into a room and was apparently going to assault her until others intervened.

That night, windows on both her home and her car were smashed. Rogers was arrested but later released for lack of witnesses.

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Attell says thereafter he bombarded her with letters and telephone calls. When she moved to L.A., someone posing as a physician--she believes it was Rogers--wrote a letter to the Screen Actors Guild saying she had AIDS and was resigning her membership.

SAG took her off its roles in response to the letter but later reinstated her when the letter was proved to be fraudulent.

A private investigator, Don Crutchfield, heard about Attell’s plight through a mutual friend and offered his help pro bono. Crutchfield is noted for his work with celebrities.

Angry by what Attell has been forced to endure, he believes the system has failed her by allowing Rogers to remain free, especially in view of the man’s criminal record of repeated violence.

The case is in the hands of the LAPD’s Threat Management Unit. While members of the unit wouldn’t discuss details of Attell’s situation, they did talk to Rogers twice before the restraining order was issued and will arrest him if he violates it.

Detective Greg Boles, who’s in charge of the unit, says police automatically assume that all suspects in such cases are potentially dangerous. Most are mentally disordered.

No one knows where Rogers is, but Crutchfield warns that if he violates the restraining order, “he may find out what it’s like to be stalked.”

Attell busies herself teaching and managing other performers, but until the stalking ends, she won’t appear in public. “He’s taken everything from me,” she says in a tone of restrained anguish. “You don’t know what it’s like to go through this. You could never know.”

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com)