Madonna stalker Robert Dewey Hoskins recaptured a week after hospital escape

By: Crimesider Staff
Topics: Daily Blotter

Robert Dewey Hoskins, 38, in Superior Court as Judge Jacqueline Conner sentences him to 10 years in prison for stalking and terrorizing pop star Madonna, in Los Angeles.

(Credit: AP)

(CBS/AP) LOS ANGELES - Police captured a man on Friday who was convicted of threatening to kill Madonna. Robert Dewey Hoskins escaped from a Los Angeles-area mental hospital last week.

Hoskins was apprehended shortly before 9 a.m. in Long Beach, where authorities believed he might have fled following his escape from the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, about eight miles away, police said in a statement.

He had been committed there last year and was returned to the facility after his arrest. Police didn't say how Hoskins escaped or where he had been over the past week.

Hoskins, 54, served a 10-year prison sentence for stalking and threatening Madonna after being convicted by a jury in 1996.

The singer testified against the man, who was shot by her personal security after he jumped the fence of her 25,000-square-foot Hollywood Hills home.

Hoskins had told the singer's assistants he would either marry Madonna or slash her throat from ear to ear.

At trial, Madonna said she felt sick to her stomach that she was in the same room as Hoskins and had nightmares about him chasing her. She said she was in Miami when she received a call, hearing that her bodyguard shot Hoskins.

"It was like a bad dream," she said then. "I couldn't believe it was actually happening and he had tried to make his threats a reality."

Police asked for the public's help Thursday in locating Hoskins. They said he is "highly psychotic" and can be extremely violent but didn't elaborate.

Upon his release from prison, he also completed a stay at Atascadero State Hospital. This is where he was determined to be mentally disturbed, police said. He was convicted of vandalism in July 2011 and was eventually placed in the Norwalk facility.

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by ThatGirlYouLove February 16, 2012 12:28 PM EST: Sadly that's my cousin. :-/; Reply to this comment


by ahendryx819 February 13, 2012 4:23 PM EST: I love how celebrity stalkers are prosecuted right then, and given real prison time. Yet whenever the rest of us are stalked, they make it a pain in the ass to even get a protection order. I had an incident worse than that, and the psycho was released after a couple of months, with a plea deal.; Reply to this comment