Bardo Wanted to Commit Suicide, Doctor Testifies

An obsessed fan wanted to commit suicide after he allegedly killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer, a psychiatrist said Wednesday.

Robert Bardo said he put the murder gun to his temple, hoping his body would fall on that of Schaeffer, psychiatrist Park Dietz told a Los Angeles Superior Court. But the gun did not go off, Dietz said. Bardo is accused of murdering Schaeffer, a star of the television series “My Sister Sam,” on her doorstep in the Fairfax district two years ago after ringing her door bell.

Dietz, a defense witness, said that Bardo, an unemployed janitor, threw a bag containing the gun and some letters, all covered with blood, into a trash can and noticed there was blood on his sleeve. “I was amazed. It was human blood. It was Rebecca Schaeffer’s blood. She was a human being,” Dietz quoted Bardo as saying. Dietz said earlier that Bardo was influenced by internal voices urging him to perform both good and bad acts.