The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence (21 page)

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No group knows more about being persistently pursued than famous people. From the local prom queen to the politician to the internationally famous media figure, all can teach us something about persistence. A very famous media figure might have hundreds of persistent pursuers, literally hundreds of Tommys.

People in Mike and Jackie’s situation often wonder what it would be like to have unlimited resources to influence, control, and punish an unwanted pursuer. They even fantasize about how simple the situation would be if they had the police, the courts, the government on their side. But it is a fantasy, because no matter how famous the victim, no matter how powerful the advocates, it simply isn’t always possible to control the conduct of other people.

Canadian singer Anne Murray experienced a case that proves this point decisively. She was stalked for years by a man who was given scores of court orders that he violated, arrested over and over again, and eventually put in prison for six years. Upon his release, a judge again ordered him to leave Murray alone, but within his first few months of freedom, the stalker violated the court order more than two hundred times.

John Searing, a thirty-six-year-old salesman of art supplies from New Jersey, was just as persistent in efforts to get what he wanted from Johnny Carson. In 1980 he wrote to
The Tonight Show
asking if they would let him do something he had wanted to do since he was a boy: yell “Here’s Johnny!” on the air some night. In response, he got an eight-by-ten photo of Johnny Carson.

Though most people would have gotten the message, Searing wrote again and then again. After a while, he got a form letter from a staff person thanking him for his proposal and explaining that it would not be feasible. But Searing kept writing. He enclosed audiotapes of himself doing impressions of Jimmy Stewart and Richard Nixon. Their famous voices made the same request: “Let John Searing yell ‘Here’s Johnny.’”

This went on for a long while, long enough, in fact, for Searing to write more than eight hundred letters.
Tonight Show
staffers, tempered by decades of experience with persistent letter writers, did not become alarmed. They did not call the police to make it stop. They did, however, call John Searing to ask why it was so important to him.

“Because nothing in life means more to me,” he told them. Soon after that call, an amazing thing happened:
The Tonight Show
said yes to the request they had ignored eight hundred times. Searing was flown to Los Angeles, given a dressing room with his name on the door, and like something out of a dream (his dream), he was walked into the studio. He watched from the side of the stage as Ed MacMahon introduced Johnny Carson with the famous words “Here’s Johnny.” “But, what about me” Searing wondered. He was told to be patient.

After the first commercial, Johnny Carson explained to the audience about John Searing and his hundreds of letters, and then Searing was introduced to America. He sat next to the famous man at the famous desk for about six minutes, explaining why he had been so persistent and what it meant to him. Carson directed Searing to a microphone and then went back behind the curtain. Searing was handed a script, from which he enthusiastically read: “From Hollywood,
The Tonight Show
, starring Johnny Carson. This is John Searing, along with Doc Severensen and the NBC Orchestra, inviting you to join Johnny and his guests: Danny Devito; from the San Diego Zoo, Joan Embery; letter-writer John Searing, and adventures in the kitchen with Doc.”

There was a drum roll. “And now, ladies and gentlemen… heeere’s Johnny!” Carson came through the curtain to great applause and gave Searing a simple instruction: “Now go and write no more.”

And that is exactly what happened: Searing went back to work selling art supplies. Persistent though he had been, his letters never contained anything sinister or foreboding. He had always maintained a job, had other interests, and above all, he never escalated the nature of his communications. While giving pursuers exactly what they want is not often my recommended strategy, particularly recognizing the impracticality of applying it regularly, it is interesting to note that
The Tonight Show
made no effort to stop Searing from writing letters.

Johnny Carson and his staff knew that letters, no matter how frequent, can’t hurt anyone, while starting a war can hurt everyone involved. Had Searing been left alone, he would likely have kept writing letters, maybe for years, maybe for his whole life, and that would have been fine. Our office has several cases of people who have written more than
ten thousand letters
to one media figure and never attempted an encounter. Those clients are entirely unaffected by the letters, which their staffs forward to us unopened and which we then review.

The issue then, is not persistence but knowing the differences between communications and behaviors that portend escalation, and those from which you can predict that a pursuer is likely to retreat or just fade away. In these situations, victims are understandably frustrated (to say the least), and they want something done to their pursuer to make him stop. The institutions of psychiatry, law enforcement, and government have proved that no matter what your resources, you cannot reliably control the conduct of crazy people. It is not fair, but it is so. My role is to increase safety and reduce fear, not to tell people what they want to hear. Still, there is always someone willing to do what a celebrity wants, whether or not it is the safest course.

I cannot recall how many times I have seen some private detective apply confrontational interventions and then feel these actions were justified by the fact that the pursuer’s behavior ultimately got worse. Having guided the pursuer into a warlike stance, the detective will say, “Whew, it’s a good thing we did all that stuff to him, because just look how serious a case this is. I told you something had to be done.” Do they never wonder what might have happened if they had just left him alone?

By way of analogy, when you are driving on a slippery mountain road at night, you do not manage the hazard by getting out and drying off the pavement—you slow down through the dangerous curves. When dealing with people who won’t let go, that means having strategies in place to lessen the likelihood of unwanted encounters. You change what you can and stop trying to change what you cannot.

A strategy of watch and wait is usually the wisest first step, but people frequently apply another management plan: engage and enrage. The option of engaging a pursuer will always be available to you, but once it is applied, you cannot simply go back to watching and waiting, even though you may find it wasn’t so bad by comparison.

Though Johnny Carson knew it, the lesson that persistence on its own is not sinister would come too late for another media figure, Los Angeles radio personality Jim Hicklin. Best known to listeners as a pilot-commentator who advised on traffic conditions, he also reported on other newsworthy events from his helicopter. When he received some annoying letters from a fan, he quickly found people who told him what he wanted to hear: “We’ll take care of it.” They didn’t.

The first letter had arrived at the Hicklin residence near the end of August 1971. The author was forty-five-year-old wimpy nebbish Edward Taylor, whose story is best told through his letters. The first one was intended to be friendly and supportive. It was addressed “Dear James” and signed “Respectfully Yours, Ed Taylor.”

Even though Hicklin never answered the letter, more came. They contained praise, remembrances, compliments, and one even suggested that Jim Hicklin run for governor. Another read, “You are a star.”

Jim Hicklin was unaware that Taylor was a tireless letter writer who had been known to several prominent people in Los Angeles for years. Taylor’s letters either amused or annoyed these people; mostly they were just ignored. But Hicklin did not ignore the letters. Instead he hired a pair of private detectives to resolve the matter. They made an unannounced visit to Taylor’s home and gave him one clear order: Stop sending letters.

This intrusive intervention didn’t stop the letters, but it did change them. The first letter following the visit from the detectives was six pages long. The penmanship was now erratic, there were many messy corrections, and all the friendliness and praise of the past was gone. “You have grievously offended me,” wrote Taylor. “I have given much thought to your implied threat against me; your presumed paranoia… or your naiveté… or your innocent receipt of a Pack of rotten advice… or is it that you are just simply Insufferably Arrogant?”

This letter introduced a new theme that was to become the principal focus of Taylor’s life for a year: litigation. It continued:

The next letter was to the general manager of the radio station Hicklin worked for:

About a week later, Taylor sent the FAA the first of many letters calling into question Hicklin’s competency to hold a pilot’s license, “until it has been established by your jurisdiction that Mr. Hicklin is of sound body & mind, I suggest he is a
threat
to life, property and him
self
.”

Note that he had at this point introduced the concepts of threat and safety. Taylor next filed a civil complaint with the superior court, demanding an apology from Hicklin. He wrote to the judge:

This letter gives a good opportunity to see the situation from Taylor’s perspective. He felt intruded upon, threatened, and, perhaps most importantly, emasculated. Recall the assumptions I said could be applied to most of us:

• We seek connection with others.
  
• We are saddened by loss, and try to avoid it.
  
• We dislike rejection.
  
• We like recognition and attention.
  
• We will do more to avoid pain than we will do to seek pleasure.
  
• We dislike ridicule and embarrassment.
  
• We care what others think of us.
  
• We seek a degree of control over our lives.
  

The effort to deter Taylor by sending private detectives collided with most of these. He was seeking connection and then saddened by the loss of his chummy (albeit one-sided) relationship with Hicklin. He was rejected. He had reached the point where the situation could bring him no pleasure, and all he could do was try to stop the pain. He felt chastised and embarrassed. He felt that others would think less of him if he didn’t reclaim his masculinity by getting an apology. Finally, he felt he had lost control over his life.

One day Hicklin made an on-air comment about people who start brush fires: “They should be tied to a stake and left there.” After hearing this, Taylor wrote that some teenager might “prod his group into acting out the sick fantasy as broadcast by Personality Pilot-Reporter-Folk-Hero Hicklin. Law enforcement finds enough skeletal remains in the hills. It is bestial to hear one condone murder-by-the-torch.”

Note the sinister nature of his references. They continued in Taylor’s next complaint to the FAA, which was that Hicklin had buzzed his home in what he called a “strafing mission”: “Is there a more barbaric, mindless, obscene act than a pilot who would aim an aircraft at defenseless humans on the ground for the sole purpose of harassment; by a pilot whose sole sick mission is to establish his dominance over his victims?”

Needless to say, the FAA did not (and could not) take any action that would have satisfied Taylor. Likewise, the court dismissed his suit. With his alternatives shrinking, Taylor typed a seven-page memo recounting in detail each “incident” involving Hicklin. He stated that Hicklin used his helicopter as a weapon and that “aircraft in the hands of mentally unbalanced men constitute offensive weaponry.”

Let’s stop and look at the context of the situation. At the start, it was simple: A famous person was sent some overly-praising letters by a member of his audience. Though perhaps not written in a style that appealed to Hicklin, the letters were appropriate for the context. At the start, the situation was not interpersonal, but after the admirer was visited by intimidating men who warned him to stop writing letters, it became interpersonal. Jim Hicklin got the last thing he wanted: a relationship with Edward Taylor. They had become enemies.