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Rebecca Schaeffer's Murder: How Actress' Death Changed Hollywood and Inspired Anti-Stalking Laws

ET looks back at Hollywood's response to the death of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, a TV star who was murdered by an obsessed fan in 1989.

In July 1989, Schaeffer was at her LA home awaiting a messenger to deliver the screenplay for The Godfather Part III, ahead of her audition later that day for the role of Michael Corleone’s daughter in the highly-anticipated sequel in Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster saga. In addition to the fan mail, Bardo was carrying a headshot-type photo of Schaeffer, one .357-caliber handgun and a copy of Catcher in the Rye-- the same book Mark David Chapman infamously had on his person when he murdered John Lennon nine years earlier. During the 1991 trial, Clark also called the head of Warner Bros. studio security to the stand, where it was made public that Bardo had unsuccessfully attempted to contact Schaeffer multiple times at the Burbank backlot while My Sister Sam was in production.

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