Episode 265:

The Answer’s Salt

The Survivor Story of Theresa Saldana

Georgia

...

Karen

Episode 265: The Answer’s Salt

On this week's episode, Karen and Georgia cover the survivor story of Theresa Saldana.

The Survivor Story of Theresa Saldana

The Survivor Story of Theresa Saldana Notes:

Header Image Source: Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Other Images: Karen’s Roast Chicken

Theresa Saldana (via Wikipedia)

Victims For Victims, 1984 made for TV movie (via IMDB)

"Theresa Saldana (August 20, 1954 – June 6, 2016) was an American actress, activist, and writer. She is known for her role as Rachel Scali, the wife of Police Commissioner Tony Scali, in the 1990s television series The Commish, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, in 1994. Major film roles include Lenora LaMotta, the wife of Joe Pesci's character in the 1980 film, Raging Bull, and as a Beatles fan in Robert Zemeckis' 1978 Beatlemania ensemble I Wanna Hold Your Hand. She was also known for raising public awareness of the crime of stalking after surviving a knife attack by an obsessed fan at her home in 1982.

On March 15, 1982, Saldana was stalked by Arthur Richard Jackson, a 46-year-old drifter from Aberdeen, Scotland. Jackson became obsessed with Saldana after seeing her in the 1980 films Defiance and Raging Bull.He obtained Saldana's address by hiring a private investigator to obtain the unlisted phone number of Saldana's mother. Jackson then called Saldana's mother and posed as Martin Scorsese's assistant, saying he needed Saldana's residential address in order to contact her for replacing an actress in a film role in Europe.

Saldana on the set of Illusion Infinity, with its filmmaker Roger Steinmann

Jackson approached Saldana in front of her West Hollywood residence in broad daylight and attacked her with a 5½-inch (14 cm) hunting knife, puncturing a lung. His attack was so fierce that the blade bent. Although there were many nearby onlookers including children the attack was interrupted only when a deliveryman, Jeff Fenn, intervened after hearing her cries, rushed from the second floor of an apartment building, and incapacitated Jackson. Following the assault, Saldana was hospitalized with 10 stab wounds and underwent a four-month hospital stay at the Motion Picture Hospital. She relived the incident in the made-for-TV movie Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story and again in an episode of Hunter.

Jackson served almost 14 years in prison for the assault and making subsequent threats against Saldana and her rescuer while in prison. He was then extradited to the United Kingdom in 1996 to be tried for a 1966 robbery and murder. Jackson (who once saw himself as "the benevolent angel of death") was found not guilty by diminished responsibility in 1997 and committed to a British psychiatric hospital, where he died of heart failure in 2004, at the age of 68.

Jackson's method of finding and approaching Saldana inspired stalker Robert John Bardo to hire a private investigator to contact Rebecca Schaeffer, a young TV sitcom star whom he subsequently murdered, also in West Hollywood, on July 18, 1989..."

— Source: Theresa Saldana Wikipedia