Actress’ Attacker Sent to Asylum for Killing Man

The drifter who tried to murder Los Angeles actress Theresa Saldana 15 years ago was sent to a psychiatric hospital Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to killing a man 30 years ago.

The Old Bailey criminal court accepted Arthur Jackson’s plea of guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility and dismissed a charge of murder. The length of his psychiatric commitment is indefinite.

The prosecution accepted the verdict, describing Jackson, 61, as suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia.

Jackson shot and killed Anthony Fletcher, 33, in 1967 after Fletcher tried to stop him during a bank robbery in central London. Queen Elizabeth II awarded Fletcher a posthumous George Cross, the highest civilian award for bravery.

Jackson later said that the botched robbery was an attempt to raise money to travel to Scotland, kill a woman with whom he was obsessed, and then kill himself. He abandoned the plan after the robbery.

In 1982, in Aberdeen, Scotland, Jackson saw “Raging Bull,” and became obsessed with Saldana, who played a role in the film. He traveled to Los Angeles and attacked her outside her West Hollywood apartment with a kitchen knife that March, stabbing her 10 times before water delivery man Jeffrey Fenn saw the attack and disarmed the assailant.

Jackson was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the attack. In 1987, Jackson confessed to the 1967 shooting in a letter to the British Consulate in Los Angeles. He described Fletcher as a hero for trying to stop him.

He was about to be released in 1989 for good behavior when Saldana campaigned for an extension to his sentence, revealing that he had sent her threatening letters. Jackson was sentenced to five more years.

Upon his release last June, American authorities placed Jackson aboard a flight from San Francisco to London to face the murder charge.

“I’m not completely at rest,” Saldana said in June. “I’m looking to the English authorities . . . and imploring them to please deal with him as the extremely violent individual that he is.”