The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence

by Gavin De Becker

  But it was the biggest day in the life of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was paraded in front the waiting press surrounded by FBI agents, rushed to a motorcade, and then whisked away in a two-helicopter armada. We saw this even more with accused Unabomber Ted Kazynkski, whose close-up appeared on the covers of TIME, U.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek (twice). The cover text of all three described Kazynkski as a “genius.”

  Reporters usually refer to assassins with triple names, like Mark David Chapman, Lee Harvey Oswald, Arthur Richard Jackson. One might come to believe that assassins actually used these pretentious triple names in their pre-attack lives; they didn’t. They were Mark, Lee, and Arthur.

  I propose promoting the least glamorous incarnation of their names. Call a criminal Ted Smith instead of Theodore Bryant Smith. Better still, find some nick-name used in his pre-attack life:

  Federal agent: His name is Theodore Smith, but he was known as Chubby Ted.

  Our culture presents many role models, but few get as much hoopla and glory as the assassin. Those who have succeeded (and even some of those who failed) are among the most famous people in American lore. John Wilkes Booth survives history with more fame than all but a few other Americans of his time.

  The tragically symbiotic relationship between assassins and television news is understandable: Assassins give great video—very visual, very dramatic. Assassins will not sue you no matter what you say about them, and they provide the story feature most desired by news producers: extendability. There will be more information, more interviews with neighbors and experts, more pictures from the high school yearbook. There will be a trial with the flavor of a horse race between lawyers (made famous just for the occasion), and there will be the drama of waiting for the verdict. Best of all, there will be that video of the attack, again and again.

  The problem, however, is that that video may be a commercial for assassination. As surely as Procter and Gamble ever pushed toothpaste, the approach of television news pushes public-figure attack.

  Way back in 1911, criminologist Arthur MacDonald wrote, “The most dangerous criminals are the assassins of rulers.” He suggested that “newspapers, magazines and authors of books cease to publish the names of criminals. If this not be done voluntarily, let it be made a misdemeanor to do so. This would lessen the hope for glory, renown or notoriety, which is a great incentive to such crimes.”

  MacDonald would be disappointed to see that media-age assassins end up with virtual network shows, but he would not be surprised. After all, the early morning mist of mass media hype was already thick even in his day. In 1912 a man named John Shrank attempted to kill Theodore Roosevelt. While he was in jail, his bail was abruptly raised because “motion picture men” had planned to pay it and secure his release long enough to re-stage the assassination attempt for newsreels. Objecting to the movie, the prosecutor told the Court he was concerned about “the demoralizing effect such a picture film would have. It would tend to make a hero out of this man, and I don’t propose that the young shall be allowed to worship him as a hero.” Probably not realizing they were pioneering a new genre, the frustrated motion-picture men picked out a building that resembled the jail and filmed an actor who looked like Shrank emerging between two bogus deputy sheriffs.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  No discussion of assassination would be complete without exploring the precautions that can be taken to prevent these attacks. First, of course, just as with any danger, one must learn that a hazard exists. In the Bardo case, for example, there were many warnings: Over a two-year period he had sent Rebecca Schaeffer a stream of inappropriate letters through her agents in New York and Los Angeles. When Bardo showed up at the studio where her show was taped, it was a studio security guard who told him which stage she was on. Bardo himself said, “It was way too easy.”

  On one of his visits to the studio, he explained to the chief of security that he was in love with Rebecca Schaeffer and had traveled from Arizona to see her. After telling Bardo the actress didn’t want to see him, the security chief personally drove him back to the motel where he was staying. Unfortunately, even having seen (though perhaps not recognized) several obvious warning signs, the security chief didn’t see to it that Rebecca Schaeffer was informed about the “lovesick” man who had been pursuing her for two years and had just traveled hundreds of miles by bus to meet her.

  After the shooting, the security chief explained his meeting with Bardo to reporters: “I thought he was just lovesick. We get a hundred in a year, people trying to get in, fans writing letters.” To the security chief, it was a matter of handling some fan according to what he called “standard procedure,” but to Bardo, it was a powerful and emotional event.

  Bardo: I had problems with the security at the studio and the feeling I had toward them, I just put it on Ms. Schaeffer.

  GdeB: What was that feeling?

  Bardo: It was anger, extreme anger, because they said, ‘No, you can’t come in, get out of here, get away from this place!’ They said, ‘She’s not interested, she doesn’t want to be bothered,’ and I just felt that she was the one that I would discuss that with personally in an encounter.

  GdeB: But she didn’t say that, did she?

  Bardo: No, but I felt, I perceived that that’s what she was like.

  The security chief’s account continues: “[Bardo was] terribly insistent on being let in. ‘Rebecca Schaeffer’ was every other word. ‘I gotta see her. I love her.’ Something was definitely wrong mentally. There was something haywire going on, but I didn’t perceive it as potentially violent.”

  In an unanswered refrain often heard after preventable tragedies, the security chief added, “What more could I have done?”

  About two weeks after Rebecca Schaeffer was killed, there was another much-publicized stalking incident that answers the question. It involved a would-be assailant I’ll call Steven Janoff. He had once pursued a client of mine, and though our evaluation determined he did not likely pose a hazard to our client, we were concerned that he might be dangerous to a co-star on our client’s television show. We met with that actress and told her about the case. Police and studio security warned the pursuer off, assuming that would resolve the matter. It didn’t, of course.

  About a year later, the actress was in rehearsing for a play. One day she saw a man outside the theater who caught her attention, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he might be the person we had warned her about, so she called us. After some inquiry, we confirmed to her that Steven Janoff was indeed the man she saw, and that he was there in pursuit of her.

  She and her representatives asked for and then exactly followed our recommendations. She stopped using the front entrance to the theater for her rehearsal visits, the box office was provided with Janoff’s photo and some guidance on what to do if he showed up, she agreed to have a security person with her, and she applied several other strategies we designed to limit the likelihood of an unwanted encounter.

  For five days, Janoff stalked the actress, but because of her precautions, he was unable to encounter her. Janoff had purchased a ticket for the opening night of her play, though he wasn’t patient enough to wait till then. One afternoon he walked right up to the box office, where an employee recognized him and sent out a call to police. Janoff produced a handgun and demanded to see the actress. The employee, hoping the gun was not loaded, ran off. Janoff turned the gun on himself, announcing that he would pull the trigger unless the actress was brought to him. After a four-hour standoff with police, he was taken into custody.

  Not only did it turn out that the gun was loaded, but Janoff had a collection of other firearms back at his hotel room.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  The Janoff case shows the enormous improvements the entertainment industry has made to address the safety of media figures. Several theatrical agencies, movie studios and management firms now routinely have inappropriate communications and visits professionally evaluated. Unlike in the Bardo
case, media figures are now more likely to be informed of inappropriate pursuit. These and other improvements have brought clear results: Successful attacks against media figures have been sharply reduced in recent years.

  I wish I could say the same for professional sports, which brings to mind the murder attempt on the young tennis star Monica Seles. Though it certainly won’t be the last attack on a sports figure, with a little effort it could be the last one facilitated by negligence.

  Before I give you some little-known details about the Seles case, I want to discuss something about the hazards public figures face that is relevant to your safety. It is the myth that violence cannot be prevented. John Kennedy once made the point that assassins could not be stopped because “all anyone has to do is be willing to trade his life for the President’s.” Kennedy’s oft-quoted opinion is glib, but entirely wrong. In fact, assassination not only can be prevented, it is prevented far more often than it succeeds. Though assassins have a few advantages over their victims, there are many more factors working against them. Literally thousands of opportunities exist for them to fail, and only one slender opportunity exists for them to succeed. It is not the type of crime a person can practice—both literally and figuratively, an assassin has one shot at success.

  Like John Kennedy, people who apply a fatalistic attitude to their own safety (e.g., “Burglary cannot be prevented; someone can always find a way in”) often do so as an excuse not to take reasonable precautions. Yes, a committed criminal might well be difficult to stop, but the absence of precautions makes you vulnerable to the uncommitted criminal.

  In the Seles case, everybody knew that it made sense for her to have security at her public appearances in Europe. Because she was deeply enmeshed in the continent’s greatest conflict, the Serbs versus the Croats, her public appearances frequently brought political demonstrations. She routinely had bodyguards at her tournaments, as she did at the 1993 Citizen Tournament in Germany.

  Nevertheless, soon after arriving on the court, one of history’s most brilliant athletes lay on her back, bleeding from a serious injury. Though ostensibly protected by two bodyguards, she had fallen victim to a knife attack, the most preventable of all assassination methods. Why did the bodyguards fail and assailant Gunter Parche succeed?

  One of the two bodyguards, Manfred, answers my question in his statement to the police, but he begins with the wrong words: “I am a telecommunications worker. I have a side job for the private guard firm at the tennis grounds.”

  Presumably, a star tennis player could fairly have the expectation that the bodyguards assigned to her would, in fact be bodyguards, professionals with some relevant training and experience. She might fairly expect that they would have at least discussed the possibility of a safety hazard, maybe even discussed what they would do should one present itself.

  But none of that happened, and the promoters did not tell her that the people they had assigned to guard her life were unqualified part-timers. She had to learn that when Gunter Parche plunged the knife into her back and then raised his arm to do it again.

  The second bodyguard’s name is Henry, and his statement, too, begins with the wrong words: “My main job is as a loader at Hamburg harbor. I have a side job where I am in charge of security at the tennis grounds. At this tournament, my job was specifically to accompany and look after Monica Seles.”

  Amazingly, both men reported that they took special notice of assailant Gunter Parche prior to the stabbing. Henry pegged the attacker quite accurately: “Call it a sixth sense or whatever, I cannot explain it, but I noticed the man. Something told me that something was not quite right with this man. He was swaying instead of walking. I cannot explain it in more detail. I just had an uneasy feeling when I saw the man. As I said, I cannot explain it in more detail.”

  Though he clearly had an intuition about the assailant, his main message appears to be that he “cannot explain it.”

  Rather than tell anyone about his concerns, Henry decided instead to put down the coffee cup (which he was holding in his hand even though he was on a protective detail for the most controversial figure in world tennis), and stroll over to do I don’t know what, and he didn’t know what. Of course, he had taken only a few steps by the time the attack had started and finished.

  It is perhaps not fair to criticize Henry and Manfred, for they know not what they do. That, however, is exactly my point.

  While Seles was recovering from the knife wound, tennis promoters set out to promote the idea that such attacks cannot be prevented. Here is promoter Jerry Diamond telling interviewers on CNN that screening for weapons with metal detectors would never work in tennis: “When you are working in an enclosed facility where you’ve got walls and a ceiling and a roof, yeah, all those things are possible. But a metal detector is not going to deter anyone who is determined to go in that direction. When [Seles] got stabbed in Germany, it cost us as promoters a tremendous amount of revenue, so we selfishly try to make our security first-rate.”

  His statement that weapons screening can’t work for tennis because some facilities lack walls and ceilings makes no sense. When I heard it, I was offended that someone would throw around life-and-death opinions with such misplaced confidence. Though he called weapons screening “ludicrous,” Mr. Diamond has throughout his career managed to screen every single spectator for something far smaller than a weapon: a tiny piece of paper, the ticket he sold them.

  He doesn’t know, I imagine, that most television shows now have metal-detector screening for audiences. Why? Because if they didn’t, some armed person with the intent of harming a TV star could get a ticket and get within immediate reach of his target, just like Robert Bardo did when he visited Rebecca Schaeffer’s TV show carrying a concealed knife, and just like Parche did at the Citizen Tournament. When you screen audience members, you don’t have to worry about what is in people’s heads because you know what is in their purses and pockets.

  Weapons screening is good enough for courthouses, airlines, TV shows, city halls, concerts, high schools, even the Superbowl (no ceiling!), but somehow, a businessman tells us, it can’t work for tennis. Of course, it’s convenient to see it Mr. Diamond’s way, because if attacks are unpreventable, then he and other promoters have no duty to try to prevent them.

  Questioned by reporters about security weaknesses in professional tennis, another spokesperson explained that since tournaments occur all over the world, security precautions cannot be standardized. Really? Everywhere in the world they require that each tennis ball must bounce 135 to 147 centimeters when dropped from 2.5 meters. Everywhere in the world the courts are required to be exactly 23.8 meters long and 8.2 meters wide, with service courts that extend exactly 6.4 meters from the net to the service line. This sounds like standardization to me, and yet they asked how could you possibly have a standard credential and access-control system in all those countries? Well, you’d just have to go to the trouble of implementing one.

  After the Seles attack, the Women’s Tennis Council publicized that they’d enhanced security, yet they didn’t require promoters to take two obvious steps: the use of metal detectors for screening spectators, and the installation of clear plastic audience barricades (like at hockey games). Weak security improvements—including those you might make in your own life—are sometimes worse than doing nothing because they give false peace of mind and convince people that safety is being addressed when it is not. Poorly designed security fools everyone… except the attacker.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  When people hear about some public-figure stalker, they may think the case can be added to a list that consists of Chapman and Hinckley and those few others they recall. In fact, each is added to a far longer list. My office has managed more than twenty thousand cases, and only a quarter of one percent have ever become public. Several individual clients of mine have received as many as ten thousand letters a week from members of the general public, some of which meet the criteria for review by our Threat Ass
essment and Management (TAM) staff. Death threats, stalking, bizarre demands, and persistent pursuit are all part of public life in America. Our work carries us to an underside of this culture that most people would not believe exists, but it does exist, just out of view, just below the surface. Here is a brief sampling of the kinds of cases we encountered in one two-year period:

  A woman wrote more that six thousand death threats to a client because he was “marrying the wrong person.”

  A man sent a client of ours a dead coyote, which the sender had killed “because it was beautiful like you.”

  A man sent several letters each day to the actress with whom he hoped to have a romantic relationship. Six times a week, he walked miles to his local post office to see if a reply had arrived. Over eight years, he sent the actress more than twelve thousand letters, one of which included a photo of him with the inscription “Can you see the gun in this picture?” We were waiting for him when he showed up at her home.