Ricardo López

Ricardo López (January 14, 1975 – September 12, 1996) was a Uruguayan-American man who stalked and attempted to murder the Icelandic singer Björk.

López was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. He moved to Lawrenceville, Georgia, United States, with his family at a young age, and began working as a pest exterminator. He had poor self-esteem, was socially reclusive, and eventually developed an obsession with Björk in 1993. Though he did not hope to be sexually intimate with her, he was particularly angry over her brief relationship with the English jungle producer Goldie due to his Black ethnicity. Over the course of nearly nine months in 1996, he made video diaries about her and other topics, at his apartment in Hollywood, Florida.

On September 12, 1996, López mailed a letter bomb, rigged with sulfuric acid, to Björk's residence in London. He recorded a final video diary explaining his motivations, and ended it by filming his suicide by gunshot. Local police found his body and the videos four days after his death and contacted Scotland Yard, who located the bomb in a London postal sorting office. The parcel was safely detonated and Björk was unharmed.

Early life Ricardo López was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on January 14, 1975, into a middle-class family, which moved to the United States and settled in Lawrenceville, Georgia. He had a good relationship with his family, and was described as easygoing but introverted. Journalist Paolo Pellegrini wrote that López had been diagnosed with Klinefelter syndrome.

With aspirations to become an artist, López dropped out of high school. Shortly before delivering the mail bomb, López attended several outpatient treatments for anxiety, but made no mention of his self-esteem issues or violent fantasies to his psychiatrist.

Letter bomb plot In 1996, López was living alone in an apartment in Hollywood, Florida. Around that time, he read in Entertainment Weekly that Björk was in a romantic relationship with another musician, the English jungle producer Goldie. López was angered by the perceived betrayal, and the fact that she was involved with a man, writing in his diary: "I wasted eight months and she has a fucking lover." He began fantasizing about how he could "punish" Björk. He recorded eleven video tapes containing approximately two hours of footage each. The tapes contain footage of López preparing his "revenge" and discussing his "crush [that] ended up as an obsession".

Death In the early hours of September 12, 1996, López started filming his final video diary entry. The final tape, titled "Last Day – Ricardo López", began with López preparing to go to the post office to mail the letter bomb to Björk's home in London. He said that he was "very, very nervous", but that he would kill himself rather than be arrested if he aroused suspicion. After returning from the post office, he resumed filming. While Björk's music played in the background, a naked López shaved his head and eyebrows with scissors and painted his head red and green with grease paint. He examined himself in a mirror and told the camera that he was "a little nervous now". He then stated, "I'm definitely not drunk. I am completely am not depressed. I know exactly what I am doing. [The gun]'s cocked back. It's ready to roll. [...] This death is for you, Björk."

Four days later, on September 16, a foul odor and blood were noticed coming from López's apartment by the building manager. Written on the wall was a message: "The 8mm tapes are a documentation of a crime, terrorist material, they are for the FBI." The package had yet to be delivered, and the Metropolitan Police intercepted it at a South London post office, after which it was safely detonated. She described it as "terrible" and "very sad", She left for Spain, where she recorded the remainder of her third album, Homogenic, away from media attention. She also hired security for her son, Sindri, who was escorted to school with a minder. A year after López's death, Björk discussed the incident in an interview: "I was very upset that somebody had died. I couldn't sleep for a week. And I'd be lying if I said it didn't scare the fuck out of me. That I could get hurt and, most of all, that my son could get hurt."

In popular culture In 2000, Sami Saif released a 70-minute documentary, The Video Diary of Ricardo López, comprising a condensed version of López's 22-hour video diary. Saif decided to limit its availability as "I want to be there when people see the film, because there are all sorts of things about Ricardo López on the internet. I like to be able to talk to people about what it is they've actually seen."

In 2013, British independent filmmaker Charlie Bambridge made a short narrative film about the final days of Ricardo Lopez entitled ‘The Best of Me’ that toured festivals and is still available on YouTube.

In 2019, independent Italian director Domiziano Cristopharo released an 87-minute erotic horror film titled The Obsessed, with the working title of Last Day: The Best of Me. López's video diary was adapted as the subject material of The Obsessed in what Cristopharo described as "Albania's first horror film" and "a body horror freely inspired to the real story of Ricardo López, Björk's stalker".