Jennifer Aniston Home Attack: A Case Study in Dealing with Stalkers
By TorchStone Senior Analyst, Ben West
The man who ran his vehicle into a celebrity’s Los Angeles home on May 5, 2025, followed a well-established pattern of Intimacy Seeking Stalkers who have long posed a serious threat to high-profile individuals. TorchStone is very familiar with this type of threat and has a model for mitigating it, which includes protective intelligence, a residential security team, and physical residential security measures.
Los Angeles prosecutors have charged a Mississippi man with felony stalking after he crashed his vehicle into the gate of actress Jennifer Aniston’s Bel Air Home on Monday, 5 May 2025. Ms. Aniston was home at the time of the incident, but private security personnel quickly responded, detaining the man until law enforcement arrived to arrest him. As our colleague, Nina Hobson, pointed out recently on Good Morning America, the heavy gate protecting access to Ms. Aniston’s home, combined with the Residential Security Team’s quick reaction, prevented anyone from getting harmed. The attack on Ms. Aniston’s home is a timely reminder that often the most dangerous threats to celebrities come from their fans, especially those fans who hold delusions of having some kind of relationship with them.
Authorities have since discovered that the suspect, whom we are intentionally not naming, had been sending Ms. Aniston “unwanted voicemail, email and social media messages” since March 2023. The New York Post republished alleged Facebook posts attributed to the suspect from October 2024 that read, “God, ‘Daddy’ always watches me & watches those who bless me, helping me get ready to see my bride Jennifer Joanna Aniston Carwyle should be y’all’s top priority!” A review of the suspect’s social media posts suggests that he regularly posted similar content, suggesting that he believed he was in a relationship—or meant to be in a relationship—with the actress.
Friends of the 48-year-old suspect told the media that he had demonstrated a decline in mental health since 2020 and had claimed to them that he was meant to be with Ms. Aniston. The suspect had reportedly recently traveled from his home in Mississippi to Los Angeles to be closer to Aniston and had been living in his car in a nearby Wal-Mart parking lot before attempting to drive through Ms. Aniston’s residential gate.
The attack against Ms. Aniston follows well-established patterns of Intimacy Seeking Stalkers who, often through delusional relationships with their target, seek inappropriate contact. They tend to resort to aggression and violence if they perceive that their target is ignoring or rejecting their advances. It is a dangerous form of stalking that has led to lethal attacks against celebrities like Christine Grimmie and Mayu Tomita in 2016; guitarist Darrell Abbot in 2004; and fashion designer, Gianni Versace, in 1997.
We regularly receive reports of subjects making unwelcome appearances at clients’ homes, and many of them claim to have some sort of relationship with the principal.
Using Protective Intelligence to Stop Intimacy Seeking Stalkers
Due to the serious nature of the threat from Intimacy Seeking Stalkers like the one who targeted Ms. Aniston, TorchStone’s protective intelligence team specifically monitors for concerning behavior targeting our clients and actively monitors those exhibiting such behavior.
Based on our experience, we can categorize Intimacy Seeking Stalkers into three threat tiers:
- Casual Social Media References
The lowest threat level consists of people who casually suggest that they are related to or meant to be in a relationship with a high-profile individual. Often, they intend the relationship to be flattery, or even a joke. Given the nature of celebrity culture, this type of fan is very common. It is important to monitor for such references, but it is not necessary to act on casual social media comments alone.
- More Commitment to the Delusion
The second, medium threat level, comes from fans who are more fixated on their delusional relationship with a celebrity. For example, we are currently tracking a suspect who has repeatedly insisted that she is the daughter of a celebrity and documents herself telling members of the public about her delusional relationship. Such individuals require more scrutiny, such as identifying them, geolocating them, checking their criminal history, and monitoring closely for any indications that they intend to travel to where the principal is. For this particular case, we have a Be On the Lookout (BOLO) file with all the suspect’s details ready to share with law enforcement contacts should we discover any indications that she could pose a more serious threat.
- Acting on the Delusions
The highest threat level is reserved for people who have both claimed a relationship with a celebrity and have traveled to be nearer to their target. If a person has both expressed delusions about being in a relationship with a principal and has traveled to be near them, it is time to notify law enforcement contacts and request assistance to avoid a more dangerous situation. In at least one instance, we became aware of a mentally unstable woman who had traveled across the country to the same town as our client, whom she had claimed was preparing to marry her. With the help of the local sheriff’s office, we were able to identify which hotel she was staying in, and a sheriff’s deputy paid her a wellness visit. She left town shortly afterwards without any incident with the principal.
Knowing Where to Watch: The Home
Another important detail to remember is that stalkers tend to target their victims at their residence. According to two years of threat intelligence data collected through our monthly Executive Protection reports, 53% of all stalking incidents targeting high-profile individuals occurred at the target’s home. Similar trends hold true for other categories of threats, including financially motivated crimes and physical attacks. As we’ve noted before, it should not be surprising that the home is the most common place for stalkers to look for their victims: it’s where people spend a great deal of their time, addresses are usually fairly easy to find through online searches, and private homes tend to have less security than offices or other restricted areas where high-profile individuals work.
The prevalence of stalking incidents and attacks on high-profile individuals’ homes emphasizes the importance of having robust security measures at residences – both primary and vacation homes, since those are typically also fairly easy to discover. But physical security measures alone are not enough. While a sturdy wall and reinforced gate can slow an assailant down, they are not enough to stop a committed attacker. For that reason, those with the resources to do so–and a threat profile to justify it–should strongly consider hiring security personnel to guard their homes.
However, while a residential security team is indispensable in responding to attacks like the one against Ms. Aniston, they normally do not have the ability to collect and assess intelligence that allows threats to be proactively identified and mitigated. Because of this, residential security teams are most effective when they work closely with a protective intelligence team, which can generate and distribute intelligence on threat actors that can help protection agents be alert for the most likely threats.
The threats from stalkers and other threatening individuals are not going away. Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate the threats they pose: namely, a dedicated protective intelligence team looking for threats and supporting a proactive security team with the assistance of robust residential security measures.