The perks of fame are obvious. While most people toil away in obscurity, a select few have the privilege of being adored by millions.
But that adoration can come with a steep price: The more people who know you, the more unwell people who know you, too. Some peoples’ fandom leads them to dark places where love and obsession results in murder.
A&E True Crime looks at a few of the most notorious cases of fans murdering the celebrities they once adored.
Yolanda Saldivar Kills Selena Quintanilla-Perez
Known to her admirers simply by her first name, “Selena,” the 23-year-old Grammy-award winning singer reigned as the “queen of the Tejano music world” when she was gunned down by the president of her own fan club on March 31, 1995.
Her assassin, Yolanda Saldivar, had met the Texas-born vocalist in 1991, after introducing herself to Selena’s father, Abraham Quintanilla, Jr., with the idea of starting a Selena fan club.
Soon after she started the club and became its president, it grew into the most successful Selena fan club in the San Antonio area. And as Selena’s popularity grew, Saldivar earned more responsibility with the family—including managing some of Selena’s businesses. But then some in the fan club lodged complaints with Quintanilla, saying they had paid Saldivar membership fees and received nothing in return.
Quintanilla confronted Saldivar in early March of 1995 and told her he would go to police with allegations of embezzlement. Three weeks later, as Selena met with Saldivar to get some financial documents, Saldivar shot and killed her.
Saldivar was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 30 years. She filed her first petition for parole in January 2025, and was in the parole review process at time of publication.
Mark David Chapman Kills John Lennon
John Lennon was a creative force behind the Beatles—the best-selling band in history. In their heyday, the Beatles were so big that Lennon said his band was “more popular than Jesus” in 1966.
That offhand remark drew widespread condemnation, especially in the American South, where a “Ban the Beatles” campaign led to boycotts and record burnings.
The comment would also eventually grab the attention of Beatles fan Mark David Chapman, who would gun down Lennon outside Lennon’s New York City apartment building on December 8, 1980—14 years after Lennon made the comment.
In an interview from prison, Chapman would say that a born-again religious conversion led him to view Lennon’s Jesus comments as blasphemous—a motivating factor in his decision to end the musician’s life.
Chapman was arrested outside Lennon’s home with a copy of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which he quoted from at his trial. Chapman claimed to have identified with the book’s main character, Holden Caulfield, who traveled throughout New York City complaining about “phonies.”
He pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life. As of time of publication, he remains incarcerated at Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
A “Strawberry Fields” memorial to Lennon was created in Central Park near Lennon’s home months after his death.
Robert Bardo Kills Rebecca Schaeffer
Rebecca Schaeffer, a 21-year-old up-and-coming actress, lost her life after being gunned down outside her West Hollywood home on July 18, 1989.
A model-turned-TV actress who had appeared in both sitcoms, like My Sister Sam, and soap operas, such as One Life to Live, Schaeffer was scheduled to audition for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather III on the day she was murdered.
Her assassin, 19-year-old Robert Bardo, had been obsessing over her for years.
A high school dropout from Tucson, Bardo studied—and then copied—how other celebrity stalkers had committed their crimes when planning his, like paying a private investigator to get Schaeffer’s address for him. He claims he felt personally betrayed by Schaeffer after she appeared in a love scene in the movie Scenes from the Class Struggles in Beverly Hills.
Only blocks from the crime scene, police recovered a copy of The Catcher in the Rye—an homage Bardo left for Mark David Chapman.
Bardo, who was prosecuted by Marcia Clark, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for his crime. He’s currently incarcerated at the Avenal State Prison in California.
Public outcry following Schaeffer’s slaying led to the nation’s first anti-stalking laws.
Humberto Castro Muñoz Kills Andrés Escobar
To the American public, Andrés Escobar was lesser known than those who precede him on this list. But to soccer fanatics around the world—and especially in his native Colombia—the center-back was an enormous star, helping usher in a golden age of Colombian soccer, when that country’s national team became a real contender at the 1994 World Cup. On the eve of that tournament, soccer legend Pele called the squad the very best in the field. Expectations were sky high.
But Colombia underperformed spectacularly at the tournament, quickly being eliminated after losing two of their three matches. Escobar became the defining image of that underperformance, accidentally scoring against his own team (an “own goal”) in the squad’s pivotal second loss, against host United States.
For that error, Escobar was shot and killed 10 days later leaving a nightclub in his home city of Medellin. Eyewitnesses said that the gunman shouted “goal, goal” with every shot he took at the 27-year-old.
The killer was later identified as Humberto Castro Muñoz, a bodyguard and driver who had connections to a Colombian drug cartel. Although the motive wasn’t identified, one of the prevailing theories pointed to a retaliation for the accidental goal on behalf of Colombian drug lords who suffered huge gambling losses
After admitting to the murder, Muñoz received a 43-year prison sentence, later reduced to 26 years. He was released after serving about 11 years.
Nathan Gale Kills ‘Dimebag Darrell’ Abbott
Musician Darrell Lance Abbott, known by his stage name “Dimebag Darrell”, helped launch heavy metal band Pantera to stardom in the 1980s and 1990s with his virtuosic guitar playing. But in 2003, the band broke up, prompting heartbreak for some of their devoted listeners.
One obsessed fan, Nathan Gale, may have held Abbott personally responsible for that breakup.
That appears to be why the 25-year-old went to assassinate Dimebag Darrell while he performed with his new band, Damageplan, at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio, less than one year later.
A former Marine, Gale rushed the stage with a gun, killing Abbott and three others, before an officer responding to the scene shot and killed him.
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