The relationship between a celebrity and a fan has always been an interesting one. It’s natural for fans to develop a close relationship with celebrities as they fall in love with their characters on screen or relate to a song that they wrote. But Bjork Stalker Ricardo Lopez was totally different.
A normal assumption though would be that fans know the difference between fantasy and reality and understand that while they may know that celebrity in depth that celebrity probably has no idea who they are.
But what happens when that fan takes their love and turns it into a deadly obsession? That’s what happened in 1996 when Icelandic singer Bjork caught the attention of 21-year-old stalker Ricardo Lopez.
The Deadly Obsession of Bjork Stalker Ricardo Lopez
Ricardo Lopez would stop at nothing to make sure Bjork knew his name and his actions led to a race against time to save the young singer’s life.
This is the story of Bjork’s stalker and in order to understand how Ricardo Lopez’s fantasies turned into an obsession, it helps to have a little background check.
Ricardo was the son of a middle-class family who came to the united states from Uruguay. He was an extremely bright kid in school but eventually dropped out to become an artist.
To support himself, he worked part-time as an exterminator for his brother’s company. By the time Ricardo was 17 years old, he had become isolated from the world and engulfed himself in the work of Bjork after seeing her video.
Human behavior at first, he just had a crush on her and was a fan of her like most. However, as time went on it would slowly turn more into an obsession.
The Plan
Three years into Ricardo’s obsession with Bjork he learned that she was involved with the musician Goldie which absolutely aggravated him. Quickly the Bjork stalker turned from someone Ricardo wanted to love to someone he wanted to hurt.
At the top of 1996, he decided he was going to devise a plan to kill her. For his 21st birthday, he purchased a camera to document his thoughts and plans. He started the recording,
“Today’s my birthday, I’m 21. I have to say Bjork has been an important part of my life. It started as a crush you know and ended up with an obsession which uh I’m not embarrassed to admit. Now I am in the position that I am just gonna have to kill you.”
There are about 20 hours of recorded footage as you watch it on YouTube. Ricardo slowly got more and more content with killing Bjork, it became his deadly mission and he was meticulous about each step.
He treats the camera as a confidant and takes you on a ride to understand his thought process. At the start of the footage, Ricardo documents the early phases of his plan.
He pays five dollars to a celebrity company to get Bjork’s address and figures out how he’s going to hurt her. He planned to punish her by mailing her a booby-trapped book into which he had placed some HIV-infected needles.
When she opened the book, the needles would shoot out into her hands and infect her.
The Hate
In case you can’t tell during the course of the videos, he realizes that his HIV-infected needle plan wasn’t going to work so instead he constructed a sulfuric acid bomb inside a hollowed-out book.
He would mail Bjork the book and when she opens it, she would be sprayed with acid and it would either disfigure her for life or kill her. Throughout the footage, Ricardo also explains the exact reason why he felt he needed to kill Bjork.
It wasn’t the fact that Bjork was dating someone that angered him, it was the fact that someone was black. To put it simply, the Bjork stalker was a complete and utter racist.
In his video, he said some really derogatory and nasty things which explain his real intent of killing Bjork.
The thing that’s interesting about Ricardo though is that he was actually extremely self-aware that being racist was bad, it’s just that he didn’t care.
He liked the feeling that making bad decisions gave him and that’s a major theme throughout the footage.
The Final Video
So on September 12th, after mailing the acid bomb he records his final video. In it he slowly shaves his scalp, then paints his face with red and green stripes, he sits on his sofa and listens to Bjork’s “I remember you” holding a revolver in his hand.
As the song comes to an end, he says this is for you and then shoots himself in the roof of the mouth before slumping dead to the floor.
Four days after his death, the manager of the apartment complex saw blood dropping out of Ricardo’s room and alerted the authorities.
Police found Ricardo’s four-day-old body as well as a camera with the videotape labeled the last day. The police went straight to the last tape and confirmed the death was a suicide as they continued watching.
Police soon realized that they only had one day to stop the mail bomb from reaching Bjork’s home. Luckily the package was spotted at a post office in South London and was intercepted before ever reaching Bjork’s doorstep.
The police safely detonated it and no harm caused apart from Ricardo Lopez. Bjork was understandably traumatized by the event and she sent her condolences to Lopez’s family.
The Real Motive of Bjork Stalker Ricardo Lopez
After the incident, many mainstream outlets reported that Ricardo had failed his mission as his male bomb never got to be Bjork. However many people believed that getting the bomb to be Bjork wasn’t his real mission at all.
When you really think about it, Ricardo understood very early that the likeliness of the bomb actually reaching Bjork was slim to none. His true intentions were that he wanted to emotionally affect Bjork and have her think of him every day of her life.
In December of 1996, Bjork said in a magazine quote, “I just think it’s very very sad the guy was obviously suffering but I have to say that I’m emotionally healthy enough not to take it personally but still it affects me and I cry and I couldn’t sleep for nights just thinking of his face.”
It’s really really sad once you understand the true intentions of Ricardo’s mission, it becomes glaringly apparent that the Bjork stalker Ricardo Lopez did succeed in his goal. Bjork know his name and at the same time emotionally affected in a twisted way, exactly how he wanted.
