Police Catch Escaped Madonna Stalker

The man who was convicted of stalking Madonna and threatening to slit her throat in the 1990s was apprehended today, after escaping a week ago from the Los Angeles mental health facility where he's been held since last year. Police told the AP that Robert Dewey Hoskins, 54, was taken into custody in Long Beach, about 8 miles from the hospital. Hoskins was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1996 after climbing the wall around her Hollywood home and jumping into her pool; he was shot twice by one of her guards.

Though Madonna wasn't there at the time, she said she saw the homeless man near her home earlier that year. She testified that he told her bodyguard that if he couldn't have Madonna, who was supposed to be his wife, "he was going to slice my throat from ear to ear." After serving his sentence and subsequent time in a California hospital, Hoskins was released, but was arrested again last year and sent to a different health facility. He is believed to have somehow walked off last Friday without anyone noticing, the Guardian reports. Police had warned the public that he is highly psychotic and has violent tendencies when off his medication. (More Robert Dewey Hoskins stories.)