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U2: Death Threats, a Song that Inspired a Killer, and the Murder of Rebecca Schaeffer · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a production of Double Elvis The Stories About You Two
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: are Insane. In nineteen eighty seven, touring behind their blockbuster
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: album The Joshua Tree, their songs became a lightning rod
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: for violence. Pride in the Name of Love, a song
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: inspired by Martin Luther King Junior, earned them a death threat.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Sunday Bloody Sunday, a song about the troubles back home
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: in Ireland, made them a target of the IRA, But
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: it was the song Exit, a tune written from the
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: point of view of a killer that was linked with
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: pure evil. That song allegedly inspired a mentally disturbed man
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: to hop an overnight bus with a loaded three point
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: fifty seven. Magnum determined to meet an actress that he
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: was obsessed with, just like he was obsessed with U
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Two's music. Great music, unlike that clip I played for
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: you at the top of the show that wasn't great music.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: That was a preset loop from my melotron called Desert
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Dagger MK one. I played you that loop because I
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: can't afford the rights to a clip from if you
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: don't know me by now, by simply red And why
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: would I play you that specific slice of red haired,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: blue eyed souled cheese. Could I afford it? Because that
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: was the number one song in America on July eighteenth,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, And that was the day that Robert
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: John Bardow arrived in West Hollywood carrying a copy of
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: The Joshua Tree and the Pistol and murdered actress Rebecca Schaeffer.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: On this episode threats the Ira The Joshua Tree, a
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: song that inspired a killer, the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and U two. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: U two's planned for how they would release their thirteenth
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: studio album was like all of you two's plans, done
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: with the best of intentions and with their hearts in
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the right place. But when Songs of Innocence was loaded
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: by surprise and for free into the music libraries of
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: more than five hundred million iTunes customers, not everyone was
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: feeling the love. To some, it was auditory spam, an
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: invasion of privacy. As U two's lead singer Bono later explained, quote,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: we wanted to deliver a pint of milk to people's
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: front porches, but in a few cases it ended up
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: in their fridge or on their cereal and some people
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: were like, hey, I'm dairy free unquote. In twenty fourteen,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: many people simply woke up one morning and suddenly found
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: they were U two intolerant. But here's the thing, twenty
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: seven years earlier, in nineteen eighty seven, millions of people
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: would have killed for a free U two album, especially
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: in America, the country that inspired the Irish band's then
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: brand new album, The Joshua Tree. Nine consecutive weeks at
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the top of the US album chart, two singles with
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: or Without You and I Still Haven't Found What I'm
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: looking For that became the band's first two number one
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: hits in the United States. The subsequent tour brought the
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: bigness of the U two phenomenon to life, one hundred
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and nine shows in nineteen eighty seven alone, seventy nine
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of them in America, most of them at capacity. It
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: was on this tour that U two graduated from playing
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: arenas to playing stadiums. They literally had to learn about
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: scaling up the tour as it was happening. Bono endured
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: rigorous physical challenges required to captivate larger and larger audiences
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: night after night. U two's music was made for this
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: big music, and Bono could sell it, especially with that
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: big voice and that big heart and the big American
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: stetson on his head too. But U two's appeal wasn't
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: just about the music. They were loved precisely because of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: their best intentions, in their hearts being in the right place,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: the very same traits that would work against them decades later.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Bono and you two were good men, the men who
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: spoke up and stood up for what was right. They
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: honored the legacy of other good men like Martin Luther
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: King Junior, not just with their song Pride in the
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Name of Love, but by publicly calling out the Governor
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: of Arizona on the Joshua Tree Tour when he refused
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: to observe the new MLK holiday at the state level.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: You two made that public statement just hours before their
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: show and Tempe. Word traveled fast, and the phone rang
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: in Sun Devil Stadium, the Arizona State Coliseum, where you
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: two were set to perform that evening. The caller was
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: anonymous and the threat was clear and present. If you
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: two dared to play that Martin Luther King song at
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the show, Bono wasn't going to live to sing the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: final chorus. Federal agents swarmed through the sold out crowd
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of more than one hundred and ten thousand, searching in
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: vain for bombs, for guns, for an assassin. U two
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: didn't back down. They played their set as planned, including
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: In the Name of Love, not because they weren't afraid
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: that someone would take a shot at their lead singer,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: because you two had lived under the threat of violence
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: their entire lives. Violence was one of Bono's earliest memories
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: growing up in Ireland during the time of the so
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: called Troubles. Violence was everywhere, Catholics versus Protestants, Unionists versus nationalists,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: thousands dead. In nineteen seventy two, British soldiers shot and
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: killed fourteen unarmed protesters in Derry, a tragedy that inspired
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: U two's early hit Sunday, Bloody Sunday. They wrote it
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: to condemn violence full stop. Instead, it created confusion which
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: side were you two really on. Bono was a good man,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: a stand up man, but he knew better than to
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: answer that question by naming names. Speaking out against the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: IRA could get a dublin or killed. A fact made
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: crystal clear the two men who approached the house where
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Bono was staying shortly after Sunday Bloody Sunday was released.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: They wore green berets and carried rifles, definitely not police.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Bono's heart pounded, instinct took over violent instinct. He grabbed
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: a large knife from the kitchen, prepared to use it
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: to slip fully into the darkness. Seconds passed. The men
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: said nothing, did nothing, just made their presence known and
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: then walked away. The sense of relief that he never
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: had to use the knife was huge. That same sense
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: of relief washed over years later at the show in Tempe,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: where Bono managed to sing Pride without catching a bullet
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: in the head. Still wielding that knife made Bono feel
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: like a hypocrite. He was a good man, a man
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: who preached an anti paramilitary agenda, anti apartheid, anti hate,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: with an anti guitar hero doling out three chords and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: truth by his side. But to think that even he
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: could be corrupted by violence, by evil, but he was.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: It crawled all over his skin whenever he sang Exit,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: one of the songs from the Joshua Tree album. He
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: was singing it Now at RFK Stadium in Washington, d C.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: September nineteen eighty seven. Exit was Bono's attempt to write
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: a song from the point of view of a killer,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: inspired by American true crime books such as Truman, Capodi's
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and Cold Blood. For the audience, it was a highlight
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: of each night's show. For You Too. It was part
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: of a stretch of songs that they called the Set's
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Heart of Darkness. Bono didn't know if he was Willard
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: searching for that darkness in order to terminate it with
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: extreme prejudice, or if he was Kurt's evil gone rogue,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: a cancer of violence metastasizing in the jungle of his
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: own soul. Either way, this thing, this evil was inside
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: him now row his legs to walk. It pumped blood
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: through his heart, and it used his voice to sing
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: to sing about hands, hands of love. Robert John Bardo
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: hit rewind on the cassette player. He wanted to hear
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: it again. Side to track five, the song Exit, He
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Loved You Too, especially this deep cut on the Joshua Tree.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Exit reminded him of his own life in his own
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: split emotional state of God and the devil, always inside
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: his head, always in constant conversation. Mostly though, when Bono
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: sang about the hands of love, it reminded Robert John
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Bardow of her, Rebecca Schaeffer, so pure, so innocent, when
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: he first saw her on a commercial for her TV
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: sitcom My Sister Sam, And that was it. He had
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: to go to Hollywood, all the way from Tucson, to
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: tell her how he felt he was sick with love.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Couldn't they see that? The security guard at the Burbank
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Studios front gate didn't want to hear it. Miss Shaffer
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to see you, Miss Shaeffer doesn't want to
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: be disturbed. So Barto returned to Tucson, heartbroken and frustrated.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: He thought about the letter he'd sent to Rebecca. How
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: she actually wrote back. She said his letter was the
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: most beautiful letter she'd ever received. How could someone who
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: said that not want to see him? Barto decided to
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: return this time, no one would stop him, and this
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: song was going to guide him. But the song was over.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: He hit rewind again on the cassette player, then he
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: pressed play exit started up again. He bobbed his head
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: to the throbbing bassline. He banged on his knees when
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: the drums came crashing in, and he listened to Bono's
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: voice singing about a man with a heavy head, his
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: fingers inside the pocket of his jeans, touching cold steel.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: A pistol. Of course, it was so clear to him
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: now studio gates, security guards. There were all obstacles between
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: him and her. A pistol would make quick work of
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: them all. Only then would he reach her, Rebecca Schaeffer,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: reach her hands, the hands of love. Bono was singing
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: about the hands of love as you two brought Exit
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: to its thunderous climax at RFK Stadium. Though the stage
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: lights were on him, Bono was still in the darkness,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: still in character, with that thing, that evil crawling all
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: over his skin. It animated him and moved him too fast.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: He slipped, His body hit the ground, and he heard
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the pop. He felt the excruciating pain, his arm dangling,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: his shoulder dislocated. He carried on, managing to finish the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: set before merging for the encore with his arm in
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: a sling, knowing full well that what had just happened
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't an accident or a coincidence. It was what happened
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: when you fucked with the devil. Nineteen seventy six, Dublin
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Lived in. Village wasn't a real village. It was a
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: state of mind, an invention, a collective of disaffected youth,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: deliberately kicking against the pricks, against the conservative ideology that
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: snuffed out hope, hope that a bright future might lay ahead.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Ireland in the seventies and eighties was devoid of future,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: embroiled in a brutal conflict that ripped apart families and
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: seemed to have no bottom or end. Ireland was not
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: all right, but the kids were and they saw it
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: spiritual refuge in punk rock and in a parallel universe.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: They called Lipton Village a place where reinvention was necessary.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Ditch your Christian name and make up a new one.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Call yourself Googie or strong Man or Gavin Friday. It
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: was at Lipton Village that Paul David Houston became Bono Vox,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: named so not for the Latin translation of clear Voice,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: but for a local hearing aid factory, and where David
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Evans became the Edge, the kid whose style of guitar
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: playing was so unique it sounded like a transmission echoing
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: from somewhere deep in the future. For Bono and the
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Edge and their friends Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Junior,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: all four of them were just outcast punk teens when
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: U two first started. Lifton Village would never truly be
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: their future. The future was somewhere else. It was all
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the way across the Atlantic, in the Redwood Forest and
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the Gulf Stream Waters. Wide awake. In America, the future
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: was in the pages of Flannery O'Connor and Alan Ginsburg,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Raymond Carver, and Sam Shepard, but it wasn't finished. It
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: was still being written, just like America. The greatest idea
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the world ever had that didn't actually exist yet, but
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: it could. A place where the streets had no name,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a place where everyone could find what they were looking for.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: You two didn't have the map, but they were finding
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: their way, a way to bring the future they had
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: discovered back to their home country. To use this platform
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: they found themselves ascending to throughout the nineteen eighties as
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest bands in the world to bring
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: attention to Ireland's troubles. A song like Sunday, Bloody Sunday
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: gave them purpose. Bonnard didn't sing that song. The song
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: sang hymn, a song that was more than a song.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: It could change the future and maybe even the world.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: You two's best intentions and big hearts drew snickers from
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the Lipton Village crowd, a scene led by Gavin Friday's band,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: The Virgin Prunes. Good friends of You two from back
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of the day, who had remained as punk as You
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: two were now populist, changing the world with music lame.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: By the time The Joshua Tree was released in nineteen
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: eighty seven, You two was on the other side of
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the globe from that imagined village, literally and figuratively. Their
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: punk cred was all but gone. But it wasn't just
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the punks who I beef with you two. The eyes
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: of the world were on them now. Nineteen eighty seven,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Denver Bono was in the future in America, but he
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: was thinking about the past, about home, about Ireland. He
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: was thinking about rubble and shattered glass, about an explosion
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: so powerful it tore off the end of a building
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: and sent vibrations rippling through people who stood waiting for
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: a parade. Nowhere to run, nowhere to escape to Bodies
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: thrown against the steel railing on the sidewalk, crushed under
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: smoldering debris, Children stumbling around on their two feet through
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: a landscape now suffocated by dust and smoke, their ears ringing, bodies, bleeding,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, gone
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: eleven dead, another sixty three injured. Word of the remembrance
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Sunday parade bombing in the Northern Ireland town of Inniskillen
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: reached U two just hours before they performed at the
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: McNicol Sports Arena during the third and final leg of
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the Joshua Tree Tours made Bono sick. He was sick
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: of it all, Sick of the violence ripping apart his
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: home country, Sick of the assumption that you two had
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: ties to an organization like the IRA. Sick that when
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: he said this is not a revel song, a portion
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: of his audience still didn't get it, instead tossing money
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: on stage in hopes that it would find its way
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: back to the quote unquote, cause he was tired of
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: living in fear of speaking his mind. After all, he
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: was a good man, a man who stood up against
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the injustices, bringing other people down. It was what was
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: expected of him and what he expected of himself. He
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: was a singer, but he didn't sing the songs. The
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: song sang him. He had surrendered to this fact years ago,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and tonight he surrendered again. He did what the song wanted.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Right in the middle of You two's performance of Sunday,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Bloody Sunday, as a film crew rolled tape, Bonos stood
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: up and spoke, let me tell you something. I've had
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: enough of Irish mayor Americans who haven't been back to
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: their country in twenty or thirty years come up to
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: me and talk about the resistance the revolution back home
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and the glory of the revolution and the glory of
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution. They don't talk
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: about the glory of killing for the revolution. What's the
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: glory in taking a man from his bed and gunning
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: him down in front of his wife and his children.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory embalmbing a
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Remembrance Day parade of old age pensioners, the medals taking
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: out and polished off for the day. Where's the glory
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: in that? To leave them dying or crippled? For life
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: or dead under the rubble of a revolution that the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: majority of the people in my country don't want no more,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: say it no more. Bono knew what he was doing,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and he knew that his rerant would draw the full
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: fury of the IRA, which of course it did. The IRA,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: like the Devil, was not an entity. You fucked with.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Fundraising for the quote unquote cause took a nose dive
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: in America. The IRA blamed the band and their naive
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: plea for peace, and when You Two returned to Dublin
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: following the end of the US tour, they were all
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: fingerprinted by the local police, and their toes too, not
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: because they'd done anything wrong, because if their bodies were
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: mutilated beyond recognition by an IRA bomb, authorities would be
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: able to identify them all because of a song. A
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: song that still got played even as death threats rolled in,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: even after Special Branch, Ireland's counter Terrorism Unit advised the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: band to increase security and told Bono that the IRA
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: would likely target his wife before they targeted him, and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the songs didn't stop except for one. Nineteen eighty nine,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: You Two was touring again, this time Australia down Under
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Bono was way under back inside that darkness. He was
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: singing Exit, the song that put him on his ass
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: two years earlier in DC, a song that still frightened
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Bono when he performed it. He thought it best that
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: he didn't fuck with that one anymore. He respected the
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: devil too much, not in a religious sense, but as
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: a powerful mindset to tap into. Bono himself was tapped out.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: So on this eighty nine tour forty seven shows total,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: you two played Exit once. Bono for one was ready
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to leave the darkness and come back to the light.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Robert John Bardo could not stop playing Exit. He rebound
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the cassette tape again and started it from the top.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: He was obsessed with U two, with the song, and
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: with her, Rebecca Schaeffer. He bought another copy of The
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Joshua Tree, this one on CD is a game for her.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: When he got to Los Angeles again, he placed the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: CD inside a shopping bag, right next to a three
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: fifty seven magnum and a box of Hollow Points and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: a paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye, the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: same book that Mark David Chapman carried when he assassinated
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: John Lennon. The magnum gave him peace of mind, made
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: him feel like dirty Harry Callahan, like Scarface, unfuck withable.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: This time, he'd go right to the source, Rebecca's apartment.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: A private investigator in Tucson tracked down her address in
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: West Hollywood for him. One under twenty North Sweezer. Amazing,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: what three hundred bucks could get you? So Robert John
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Bardo boarded a late night bus and Tucson headed west.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Shopping bag in his hand, the song Exit in his head.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: He cranked the volume on his walkman. The music drowned
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: out most everything else, doubt, uncertainty, morality. It couldn't drown
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: out the voices, though they were back now, God on
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: one side and the devil on the other. The voices argued.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: As the bus cut through the California Desert along Eye ten,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: just south of the Joshua Tree National Park, stars heavy
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: in the night sky, Bardo let them argue. There was
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: no stopping them now, no stopping this bus from reaching
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: its destination, and no stopping Robert John Bardow from getting
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: what he wanted. We'll be right back after this. We're, We're,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: we're July eighteenth, nineteen eighty nine. Robert John Bardow ate
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the onion rings first, and then the cheesecake. Didn't matter
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: that it was still morning. It was eating like it
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: was later in the day, morning, afternoon, evening. It was
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: all the same. One hour bled into the next. Time
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: was inconsequential. The only linear thing was his path from
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Tucson to here West Hollywood. First stop some greasy spoon
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: to satisfy the rumbling in his stomach, then over to
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: North Sweezer to Rebecca's apartment, where he would satisfy his mission.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: The bus ride was long. He barely slept all night.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: He kept looking out the window, up at the stars,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: nails in the sky, just like Bono Sang, thinking about her,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: How about what she would say or do when he
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: just showed up. What if she didn't like him? She
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: was capable of shutting him out of that same arrogance
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: so grotesquely displayed by the security guard in Burbank, and
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: she had disappointed him before that new movie she was
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: in scenes from a class struggle in Beverly Hills. Was
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: nothing like her squeaky clean sitcom roll. In that movie,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: she was in bed with her male co star. They
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: didn't show anything, but Bartow could imagine it hands all
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: over her body, making her unclean, impure, dirty. The thought
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: enraged him. The voices in his head joined in like
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: a Greek chorus, shouting his rage becoming the devil's rage,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: and the devil's rage drawing forth the wrath of God.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Bardo felt momentarily betrayed. The feeling quickly passed, and so
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: did the voices. He had nothing to worry about. She
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: would like him, She wouldn't be pissed. She would open
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the door and he would be standing there, and he
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: would say, Hi, I'm Robert John Bartow from Tucson, Arizona.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of yours. And then he'd give
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: her the copy of the Joshua Tree, along with another
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: letter he'd written, a special letter, a letter so special
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: he wanted to hand deliver it. He finished his cake,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: paid his tab, and left the diner. He wasn't sure
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: who or what he would encounter between now and the
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: moment he had been waiting for. He had to prepare.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: He ducked into an alley there alone, unseen. He pulled
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the three fifty seven magnum from his shopping bag and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: loaded five of the hollow point rounds. He left one
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: cylinder empty, just in case he jostled the bag and
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the hammer accidentally struck. He didn't want to literally shoot
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: himself in the foot with the pistol, just like he
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: didn't want to metaphorically shoot himself in the foot if
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: he said the wrong thing to Rebecca. This was it
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: his big chance, his future. Don't fuck this up, fucking
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: it up with me and going back to the way
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: things were. He was nineteen, too old for Foster Holmes now,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: but not too old for an institution like the one
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: he'd been put in four years prior. The doctor's there
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: asked him the kinds of questions that his drunk father
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and mentally ill mother never could, Questions about the voices
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: in his head, about the things he wrote, things like
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I will fight because I am evil and I feel
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: that if I get pushed around, I will kill. Bardo
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: rode as big and as bold as the devil felt
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: to him. K I L L all caps, all powerful.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: But killing wasn't on the agenda today, not at this moment.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: At this moment, it was ten point fifteen am Pacific time,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: and Robert John Bardo was standing in front of Rebecca
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Schaeffer's apartment at one twenty North Sweezer pressing the buzzer.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Seconds passed, the door opened, and there she was right
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: in front of him, no security, just the two of
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: them alone together. It was perfect. A wave of euphoria
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: smacked Bardo in the face. He smiled, Hi, I'm Robert
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: John Bartow from Tucson, Arizona. I'm a big fan of yours.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: He was so excited, so nervous. He told her he
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: was sorry to bother her, but he just had to
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: see her. He reached it into his shopping bag. His
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: hand grazed the copy of the Catcher in the and
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: then the pistol. He pushed them aside and fished out
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: not his new letter, but the letter she had sent him.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Remember this, Rebecca, you said my letter was the sweetest
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: one you ever got. Rebecca herself was sweet at this
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: very moment. She did remember it was a nice letter.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: She told him to take care, and then she shut
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: the door. Bardo was elated. As he walked away. He
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: thought about running to the bus station, hopping the next
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: greyhound back to Tucson so he could tell his brother
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: all about it. He would never believe him. She remembered
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: his letter said he was sweet and told him to
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: take care. What does she mean by that? Now that
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: he was thinking about it, what did she meant by
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: that entire interaction? Was she actually being honest or was
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: she just acting? That's what she did for work? After all?
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: How could he be sure she was being sincere? And
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Seemed like she was in a hurry, like she didn't
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: have time for him. She bum rushed him. The whole
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: thing was over so fast he forgot to give her
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the CDE and the letter. Shit, what would happen if
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: you went back there? Will she smile at him again?
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Or was she get angry this time? A breeze picked up,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: and so did the sounds inside his head, the voices
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: of good and evil, of Bono howling in a desert wind.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: He had to do it, to go back, to place
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: those things in her hands, the hands of love. His
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: heart raised. He reached into the shopping bag again and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: took out the pistol and loaded the final empty chamber
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: with the final bullet. He didn't think about it, He
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: just did it, just like what he was doing now.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Walking back to Rebecca's apartment, he rang the bell, no answer.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: His heart was pounding in his chest. Now he rang
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the bell a second time. At last, the door opened,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: and Rebecca Schaeffer stood in the doorway in her bathrobe.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: You came to my door again. She was annoyed, so
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: obvious he was bothering her. He knew it. He was
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: a pest, a creep, a piece of fucking shit. She
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: didn't know him. He was a fan, and not just
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: any fan, her biggest fan. She was it for him,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and she was just gonna treat him like an annoyance
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: and inconvenience. It was callous as what it was disappointing,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: It fucking hurt. The voices were swirling now. His heart
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: was beating, beating, beating. He reached his hand inside the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: shopping bag, and the pistol weighed a ton. I forgot
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: to give you something, he said. He pulled out the
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: three fifty seven magnum its barrel. As long as the
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: devil was bold, the same devil that talked to him
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: back at the fucking institution, and was talking to him now,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: talking not through a pencil that scribbled K I L L,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: but through a pistol that spoke the same language, only
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: with greater force and greater violence. Robert John Bardow's mission
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: a near path. It ended here. He pointed the gun
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: at Rebecca's chest. He wrapped his finger around the trigger,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and then he fired. The attorney approached the judges bench,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: where he loaded the tape inside a small black portable
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: cassette deck. He pressed play. The courtroom was silent, the judge,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the prosecution, the defense, the small crowd assembled in the gallery.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: They all listened, first the sound of crickets, then the
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: bass guitar beating, beating, eating, like a human heart, but
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: not Rebecca Shaeffer's heart. Her heart beat no more. Her
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: heart stopped in an instant when it was hit with
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: a hydroshock hollow point from the muzzle of Robert John
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Bardo's gun. Rebecca Schaeffer, twenty one years old, was dead,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and Robert John Bardo couldn't sit still. He listened to
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: U two song Exit, along with the rest of the
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: courtroom from his seat at the defence table, and he
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: rocked back and forth. The song cradled him in darkness,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a darkness that was already inside him, that spoke to him,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and the voices of good and evil. But evil was
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: once again in the driver's seat. Evil brought a smile
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: to Bardo's face. As the song's dynamic shift went from
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: quiet to loud. Bono's voice from a whisper to his scream.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: The beat clear cut and steady, but the guitar is
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: becoming fuzzy and distorted, the sound of a shell cracking
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: open in the red hot ooze inside, spilling out. Who
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Robert John Bardo climbed inside that broken shell, into a vacuum,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: nothing but him and the song. He mouthed the words,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: every line, loving it, obsessed with it. Who wasn't singing
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: the song? The song sang him right there, right there
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: in the courtroom, Robert John Bardo, on trial for murder,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: rocking the fuck out. When the song ended, it was
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: like a toggle switch at flipped. Bartow reverted to the
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: way he'd been these last three weeks of this trial, silent, still, complete,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: and total lack of effect. The judge had the song
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: played for the court so that he could witness the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: hold it had on Bardow for himself, but it wasn't
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: enough to convince him that Bartow's schizophrenic illness was to blame.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: He planned and plodded, He loaded every last chamber of
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: his three fifty seven magnum. He lay in weight for
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Rebecca Schaeffer to emerge from her apartment and murdered her
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: in cold blood. He did that, not the song, a
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: song which now belonged to him. Robert John Bardow stole
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: the song Exit from U two, just like Charles Manson
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: stole Helter Skelter from the Beatles in Rattle and Hum,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: both the concert film and the double album that documented
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: the Joshua Tree tour. Bono opens YOU Two's cover of
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Helter Skelter by saying they were stealing the song back
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: from Manson. Rattle and Hum was intended to be a
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: document of U two's ongoing obsession with America, with Elvis
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: and Graceland, the Blues and R and B, with a
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: future and a hope they found lacking back in Ireland.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: It came off as a self indulgent ego trip. You two,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of course, had only the best of intentions, as they
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: always did, but they were beginning to believe what was
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: being written and said about them that they jumped the shark,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: that their best days were behind them. They did feel
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: creatively and physically exhausted at a Crossroads future unknown, so
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: they employed an old trick that punk rock Lipton Village
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: state of Mind. They reinvented themselves. Their next album, Oktong Baby,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: traded America for Europe. It used new sounds to envision
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: a new future, a future now being written by a
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: busted up Berlin wall, and the promise of German reunification.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Oktong Baby was released in November of nineteen ninety one,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: just weeks after Robert John Bardow was convicted of first
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: degree murder, sentenced to life without parole at a California
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: state prison where he'd never see the outside again. Outside
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: the place where the future continued to unfold, where the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: world slowly began to change, the provisional IRA ceasefire in
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, the Good Friday Agreement of nineteen ninety eight,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: which brought decades of bloodshed Ireland mostly to an end.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: In the thirtieth anniversary tour for the Joshua Tree in
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, when You Two performed Exit for the first
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: time in nearly three decades. They were stealing the song
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: back from Robert John Bardow, from a man who had
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: tried and failed to make the music a Disgrace. I'm
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
• 35:54
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• 35:56
  Speaker 1: a member right now by going to disgracelamppod dot com
• 36:00
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• 36:04
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• 36:08
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• 36:13
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• 36:17
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• 36:21
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• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Rock a Roller, He then Man