Dr. Drew Pinsky’s alleged stalker threatened to kill his wife and children before being thwarted by local police.
The addiction specialist spoke to Fox News Digital about his experience as an object of psychotic stalking, which is also explored in Monday’s episode of “Hollywood Demons.”
While Dr. Drew never came face-to-face with his stalker, the man allegedly threatened his family with violence and used small claims court to harass him. There were a few close calls as the man’s stalking behavior escalated, and he began to appear in person at places Dr. Drew might be.
“When I was at radio one night – I was in the building, but somebody else drove out he thought was me. And he jumped on the hood of their car and started screaming wildly at them about me,” the longtime host of “Loveline” told Fox News Digital.
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“And he’s had a couple of small claims actions against me in Santa Monica that were insane … delusional. That I’d put … an implant in his tooth. It forced him to have erections. It was crazy stuff. I threw it away the first couple of times. I couldn’t believe that the court would be serious about it, and I finally called the court when the third sort of summons came, and I went, ‘What, do you make me come in?’ They went, ‘Oh, yeah, you have to. You have to come in. You’re summoned.’ And had I come in, I would have been face to face with this guy. And who knows what might have happened then.”
Even though his kids were being “actively threatened” by the stalker, Dr. Drew and his wife kept the information to themselves. The TV personality actually credited his wife with solving the whole case.
“It was funny when the media was reporting on it, they said I had a cybersecurity specialist,” he recalled. “That’s my wife who did it all on her own, and she had what I consider to be her proudest moment.”
Pinsky’s wife, Susan, gathered the entire digital footprint the stalker had created and presented it to the local police: “She laid out everything she had uncovered. It’s a long story. I mean, first the guy was stalking me on MySpace, then through the courts, and then sort of kind of around in person, around the radio station and then this elaborate website that had all kinds of threats and stuff that we found.”
Dr. Drew recalled his wife telling the Pasadena police officer, “You see, he says he’s going to come to our house. He has a map. He’s going to kill my children and eat them in front of me. You need to get this guy. Do you understand?”
“She goes, ‘I’m not afraid to die. If you don’t get him, I will. I’m not afraid to die.’ And the cops are like, ‘Calm down, Mrs. Pinsky. We got this.’ But it was still her proudest moment, in my opinion.”
At the time, Pinsky had a “pretty clean sense” the stalker suffered from “amphetamine-induced psychosis.”
“L.A. has a very effective department within the DEA of prosecuting stalkers. And I was with that team and I said, ‘Look, this is psychotic stalking, and this is a meth addict. Get him treatment for his meth addiction. He’ll have to go away. He’ll have to be in treatment for a long period of time.’ And he went into a dual diagnosis program for two years.”
“And guess what? He was better afterward, a lot better. And he’s not been re-stalking; treatment works.”
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Monday’s “Hollywood Demons” episode also touched on some other celebrities who have been stalked: Justin Bieber, Sandra Bullock and Ashanti.
Ashanti’s alleged stalker sent messages to the musician’s mother.
“Some of the messages were about just wanting to be with me and meant to be together,” she recalled during the episode.
“So he was sending lewd photos,” Ashanti revealed. “It makes you feel a little scared. This is like another line being crossed.”
The R&B singer’s stalker was convicted twice on charges of stalking and harassing Ashanti and her family.
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Bieber has had multiple stalkers, including a New Mexico man and his nephew who plotted to murder and castrate the pop singer in 2013.
The plan began after a man in prison attempted to contact Bieber with no response. He then recruited his nephew and another man to drive to the “Love Yourself” singer’s home and castrate him with garden shears before murdering him, according to reports.
Bullock hid in her closet after a man, who had been stalking her for days in 2014, successfully broke into her home.
“The fact that Joshua Corbett actually scaled a wall, made it through security, came into the house really shows potential for serious consequences,” Dr. Drew said during the episode.
Corbett, who believed Bullock was his wife, carried a notebook that featured photos of the actress along with poems he had written and a love letter. “The fact that Joshua Corbett actually believed he was married to Sandra, that’s erotomania.”
Erotomania is a mental health condition that occurs when someone has a delusional belief that a person is intensely in love with them without any evidence to prove it.
“On one hand, he claims he’s married to Sandra Bullock, on the other hand, he’s going to violently sexually violate her,” Dr. Drew said. “This is like Unabomber stuff. This is severe psychosis. It’s delusional. But this really shows that when adulation or adoration flips into ‘I want to be with that person’ or ‘I believe that person wants to be with me,’ we’re in big trouble.”