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- [00:02]
Jake Brennan
This is exactly right.
- [00:11]
Double Elvis.
- [00:14]
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- [01:04]
Jake Brennan
Discos. Welcome back for another trip into the Disgraceland archive. This time to pay a visit to the Icelandic princess Bjork and one of the most harrowing true crime stories and near misses from music history. This was one of those stories that I completely missed when it happened. And I don't know how. This story, the story of Ricardo Lopez's deadly obsession with the pop star who was seemingly everywhere at the time, back in 1996. This story must have been hard to miss. But somehow I did. Probably because I was rolling around America in a crappy van with a bunch of smelly bandmates and preoccupied. Anyway, once I finally did hear about this story years later, I couldn't believe how weird and eerie it was. And of course, once I launched Disgraceland, I knew I'd one day tell this
- [01:51]
story in audio format. So here it is.
- [01:55]
This story has been depicted all over YouTube and in some pretty sensational ways. I try to do a better job than that. I try to lean into the thriller aspect of this story.
- [02:04]
I tried to really show who Bjork
- [02:05]
was as an artist and how she used her home terrain, literally the land and the elements from Iceland, to form her singing style. And I also tried to dramatize the fact and focus on the fact that there was a ticking time bomb in this story that was about to go off. One that was set to kill one of the biggest pop stars in the
- [02:27]
world at that moment.
- [02:29]
That seemed. Those things at least seemed as interesting to me as the weirdness of Ricardo Lopez's grease paint and shirtless body that you're going to find on YouTube. Anyway, we released this one not too long ago back on June 6, 2025, but seeing that we've got a lot of new listeners coming into the feed at the moment, I thought it would be cool to pull one of my favorites out, if for no other reason than to make sure that this Bjork episode doesn't get overlooked in our massive archive. Like I said, released back in June of 20002025 not too long ago. So nothing really new to report on this story at the moment, but that shouldn't matter. This story is wild. Buckle up and enjoy Bjork in Disgraceland
- [03:11]
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about obsession, about art, about death, about a high stakes search in low down hate. It's also about love, mercy and creativity. This is a story about a deranged fan and the musician he obsessed over. Bjork, a musician who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my melotron called grease paint assassin mk2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Macarena by Los Del Rio. And why would I play you that specific slice of Come on man, not this song again. Cheese could I afford it because that was the number one song in America on September 12, 1996. And that was the day that Ricardo Lopez went to his local post office with a gun in his pocket and a package in his hand, setting off one of the weirdest and potentially disastrous chapters in music history. On this episode. Obsession, Hate, Creativity. A deadly package. Ricardo Lopez and the Icelandic drum and bass Princess Bjork. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace Sam. All Bjork wanted to do was create, and sometimes it seemed like all the world wanted to do was prevent her from doing so. Especially in 1996. Buzzing about her London apartment, the 30 year old singer was attempting to piece together music that would bridge the excellence of her first two solo albums, debut from 1993 and post from 1995 to some sort of as yet unimagined artistic evolution. Drum and bass music blared throughout the apartment and CD jewel cases were scattered about most of the flat surfaces. A giant projector screen was set up for feature film viewing. Japanese Independence and Ren and Stimpy cartoons, video cassettes and books were strewn about everywhere and her bed was upstairs, as was the bed belonging to her 10 year old son. The dad wasn't in the picture Speaking of pictures, Bjork's face adorned the covers of numerous magazines, laying about Vox, NME and CMJ from the States. Also from America, Interview magazine with an ageless Goldie Hawn on the COVID and a Bjork interview within. On the wall, a telephone, which Bjork made a habit of not answering. In most stories about artists, this is the point where the storyteller would say, since breaking onto the scene in the year, blah, blah, blah, Bjork had blah blah, blah and blah, blah blah. But Bjork was practically always on the scene. She'd broken through at the age of 11 in her home country of Iceland. Granted, Iceland, back in the time of Bjork's breakthrough in 1977, had only a population of about a quarter million people. But still, fame is fame, and no matter how atomized pressure is pressure, Bjork's hippie parents recognized early on that their daughter could sing. And soon after, a performance of young Bjork's, the recording of which was arranged by her parents to be broadcast on national Icelandic radio led to a recording contract and an album was released in December of 1977. A series of punk bands followed for Bjork as she developed her voice, a voice like no other. As the teenage Bjork strolled through her Icelandic homeland, bundled up on her way to and from school, she'd cut through the raw, frozen landscape and the icy mountains shooting up out of nowhere and along the jagged coastline and past the bulging glaciers and floating icebergs and through the fertile lowlands and over the black sand beaches, this dramatic landscape gave way to wild, wicked winds. Winds that whipped up in sneaky fits and starts that were there in an instant and then gone as soon as they arrived. As Bjork walked through this maze of natural drama, she sang to herself. And when the winds gusted, she'd have to raise her voice to hear herself. And when the winds disappeared, she'd drop her voice to a whisper so as to not be heard by any curious passersby. In this way she developed one of the most unique singing styles in all of pop music. To hear Bjork sing is to hear the voice of a true original. And that originality was born of Iceland's dynamic terrain. Just like the singer herself, Bjork's voice soars. It shoots up out of nowhere like an iceberg and then quickly sinks below the waterline, submerging itself in the mystery of the deep. You could hear this style rounding into form in Bjork's first real project of international consequence. Her band the Sugar Cubes, a band that garnered critical acclaim in the UK and in the US with their single Birthday and their Electra Records distributed album Life's too good. In 1988, the sugar cubes appeared on Saturday Night Live in the states, but by 1990 the band was broken up and Bjork was now a young single mother, having given birth to a son by the Sugar Cube's guitarist Thor Elden. She soon launched a solo career through a creative collaboration with Soul to Soul alum and Massive Attack co conspirator Nellie Hooper. And the fruit of this relationship led to the release of Bjork's first proper solo album, debut in 1993 with its massive hit Human Behavior. And the album was an international commercial success, which quickly led to more success, including the Brit Awards and a collaboration with Madonna for her 1994 album Bedtime Stories. And before anyone could take a beat to appreciate the whirlwind swirling around Bjork, the artist continued creating, now in collaboration with producer DJ Tricky and 808 State's Graham Massey. And by 1995 Bjork had a second, even more successful solo album on her hands, called Post. Post was in a way, a perfect sophomore effort. It reinforced every promise made on Bjork's debut. It doubled down on the sounds Bjork first presented with excellent singles army of Me and it's oh so Quiet. And the album solidified Bjork as a one of a kind visual artist with her videos for those tunes, each one presenting a new vision imagined by the artist and the groundbreaking director she chose to collaborate with Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze among them. It was a vision that cast Bjork as a generational artist, a venerable pixie, five foot four but full of roar, and the slack generation's female answer to the man who fell to earth. But with beats and a total babe to boot. By this time, Bjork's fame was not atomized. By 1996, Bjork was an explosive international pop star. 1996 was a much different time for pop stars than 2025. Nowadays, artists pay a premium for people's attention. The premium they pay is their privacy in exchange for relevance. Artists open up their private worlds to show the public their authentic selves. And no moment is too sacred for some and for others. Even the most innocuous peek behind the curtain can result in millions of views, likes, shares and new followers. In 1996, it was very much the opposite. In the 90s, artists put a premium on privacy. Once an artist broke through. There was no need to open themselves up because the media at the time was completely different. Small armies of publicists and agents and managers and ships ensured that the public saw exactly what the artists and celebrities wanted them to see. Spoon feeding publications to keep their clients names in the public long enough to maintain continuous relevance. McCann photo ops and prearranged Q and A interviews could only go so far. It was then as now, natural, if you'll excuse the pun, human behavior to want to know more about the artists who inspire us. Enter the paparazzi. Pesky photographers and gossipy so called journalists still exist, as they always have. It's just that today they're more of a utility than a nuisance in this digital age war for our eyes and ears, artists and celebrities court attention and thus the paparazzi. For clicks follows and relevance in the navel gazing 90s artists loathe the attention of the paparazzi, going to extremes to avoid their cameras and questions, lest their raw comments and unwanted candids would end up in the pages of checkout line trash. So when itty bitty Bjork went full Sean Penn on a member of the paparazzi in a Bangkok airport in early 1996, attacking a reporter with her fists in front of her young son and also in front of numerous other cameras, this behavior was not seen as something beyond the pale. It was only a bad moment for Bjork, who had just completed an international flight and was likely sleep deprived and a bit beyond herself in the moment. Bjork eventually apologized and the incident wasn't in the least bit damaging to her career. Still, the images of Bjork's attack were broadcast all over the world. For culture vultures, this was a delicious peek behind the curtain at Bjork's authentic self. A young tiger mom defending her privacy. Most people could sympathize with that, including a fan all the way over in the United States. An obsessed fan. A fan whose obsession was bending toward derangement. A fan who was in love with Bjork. A fan who wrote countless letters to Bjork, letters that went unanswered. A fan who had to know that Bjork knew who he was. A fan who was sick. A fan who was racist. A fan who could not accept that his obsession, this Snow White picture of creative purity, was now in a relationship with the UK DJ Goldie, a black man. This demented fan believes he had to do something about this agreement, this insult. If Bjork wouldn't answer his letters, if Bjork wanted to debase herself. If Bjork wanted to embarrass fans of hers like him, well, then he would just have to introduce himself to Bjork. He'd have to make sure that Bjork knew who he was, and he'd do so formally with a letter. A letter inside of a package. A package that, come hell or high water, Bjork would open. And by doing so, Bjork would learn exactly who he was. And seconds later, Bjork will be violently blown to bits.
- [15:37]
Psychology of Your 20s Host
May is mental health awareness month, and your 20s, they can feel like a lot. On the psychology of your 20s podcast, we unpack the anxiety, the overthinking, the heartbreak, the identity crisis, all of it that comes with being in your 20s. Because if you've ever thought, is anybody else feeling this way? They definitely are.
- [16:00]
Psychology of Your 20s Guest 1
I feel like my 20s was a process of checking off everything that I was not good at to get to what I was good at. Oftentimes we take everything a little bit too seriously and we get lost in things that we later on decide weren't even important to us to begin with.
- [16:16]
Psychology of Your 20s Guest 2
There was a large chunk of my twenties that I like, was just so wanting to, like, be out of that phase, out of my skin, and I just, like, really regret not living in the present more.
- [16:24]
Psychology of Your 20s Host
Each week, we break down the science behind what you're going through and give you real tools to navigate it. Your 20s aren't about having it all figured out. They're about understanding yourself just a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [16:44]
Chelsea Handler
This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Emilia Clarke.
- [16:50]
Chelsea Handler Guest
When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?
- [16:58]
Chelsea Handler
Rather be disappointed in. Do that Dennis Leary.
- [17:03]
Chelsea Handler Guest
I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bottle. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And here's the tie. The Kardashians family over there. Everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been sleepwalking.
- [17:25]
David Oyelowo I love this podcast. Whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts guy.
- [17:35]
Chelsea Handler
Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kid broke up with Keith Urban.
- [17:40]
Chelsea Handler Guest
Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was gonna wear, not like a life she was gonna lead.
- [17:46]
Chelsea Handler
Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Mongeau, Camilla Marron, Carrie, Kenny Silver and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:08]
The Knife Host
Every story has a point where it's balanced on a knife's edge.
- [18:11]
Jake Brennan
That's where we begin.
- [18:13]
The Knife Host
For some, it's a confrontation no parent ever expects.
- [18:17]
The Knife Guest
They finally admit, we're here to take your children. The department has taken custody and we're here to take your kids. It was just shock and horror and desperation.
- [18:26]
Jake Brennan
For others, it's surviving the unthinkable as
- [18:30]
The Knife Guest
they're having this gun battle. Thousands of feet up in the air, many of the boats start to puncture the aircraft. I thought we were gonna die then.
- [18:39]
The Knife Host
The Knife is a podcast about real people whose lives were upended in an instant.
- [18:44]
Jake Brennan
We talked to the people who lived it, unpacking what happened, how they got through it, and what came next.
- [18:51]
The Knife Host
And on our off record episodes, we go even deeper into the reporting and answer the questions you can't stop thinking about.
- [18:57]
Jake Brennan
New episodes drop every Thursday on the Exactly Right network and the I Heart Podcast Podcast Network.
- [19:02]
The Knife Host
Listen to the knife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:11]
Jake Brennan
Dark, syrupy and persistent. That's how the housing manager at the Hollywood, Florida Van Buren Apartments would describe the substance seeping into the ceiling. If there was a smell to it, he couldn't tell. But whatever it was, it didn't seem like this substance was done with the cheap acoustic ceiling tiles. Slowly, it persisted through the floor from the apartment above and down into this concerned tenant's apartment. There are those moments in life when the world is one way, but then you know if you open your mouth and say what you're about to say, that nothing will ever be the same again. The housing manager didn't know exactly what the substance was, but he knew that this was one of those moments. He had to do it. One phone call and the police were there in minutes. Ricardo Lopez had seen Bjork's Human Behavior video on MTV three years earlier, and it changed his life. Bjork was an unimaginable beauty to Ricardo, who even to himself was was an unimaginable beast. 18, extremely overweight and hopelessly unable to speak to girls, Ricardo had to some extent already given up on the world A Uruguayan immigrant and helpless mama's boy whose mother lived on another continent. In his home country, Ricardo's life consisted of unsteady work with his older brother's southeast Florida extermination company, Miami Mice, and increasingly, locking himself away in his tiny Van Buren apartment and obsessing over celebrities. Ricardo saw himself as a celebrity someday, not as an artist, though he did paint and illustrate and wasn't without talent. He did not see art as his ticket to fame, but simply as a way to occupy his hands. In his overactive mind, no celebrity would come to him by other means. Ricardo had no desire to accomplish anything in exchange for his fame. He just wanted to be famous for the sake of being famous. MTV tabloid magazines, 1990s Celebrity culture in general, red carpets, gossip disguised as entertainment news shows. Ricardo Lopez lived for all of it. More and more, he saw himself as a part of this machine, alongside some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Bruce Arnold, Sly. Naturally. Then, Ricardo needed a celebrity girlfriend. At first, he settled on Geena Davis. She was adorable, if not terribly original. But then, upon seeing Bjork blast across his television screen one night, Ricardo Lopez fell in love.
- [21:57]
Ricardo Lopez (voice from tapes)
Bjork has been an obsession. Look at this beautiful, beautiful face. This cute, innocent, sweet and shy thing.
- [22:11]
Jake Brennan
Ricardo poured his love into the pages of his diary. Hundreds of pages detailing the endless appeal of the Icelandic songstress. Pure as the Nordic snow, Bjork's beauty promised just as much as God does on the first day of spring. And one day, Ricardo's love would be reciprocated, deprecated. Bjork would come to love him the way his mother did, but differently, in the way that Ricardo imagined. Only artists can love, tapping into the same deep reservoir of empathy and sensuality they mind for their work.
- [22:43]
Ricardo Lopez (voice from tapes)
Most people are cockroaches, me being one of them. If you look around you, I'm a piece of. Okay, I'm dirty, sloppy, fat, disgusting. Okay, I'm a piece of.
- [22:54]
Jake Brennan
But celebrity giveth and celebrity taketh away. January 1996. Ricardo's Entertainment Weekly arrived in the mail. At first, the magazine sat untouched on his makeshift plywood desk amid the squalor in his small apartment. Dirty styrofoam takeout containers, sticky empty soda cans, filthy clothes, paint supplies, old newspapers, trash bins overflowing, wet towels hanging over various pieces of cheap furniture, all of it barely masking the layer of real filth below, it all covering his entire living space. And on the walls, numerous paintings, drawings and posters of Bjork captured in what Ricardo Lopez believed were better days. Because, as his Entertainment Weekly had just informed him, Bjork had changed. These days, Bjork was dating a black man. The producer and DJ Goldi. And there they were, right there, out on the town in the pages of his magazine. Look at the way he dressed. What the hell was that all about? Didn't Goldy have any class? Didn't he know he was the luckiest man on the planet to be on the arm of such a pure soul? But Bjork was no longer pure. Bjork was damaged. This was a betrayal that Ricardo was certain Bjork could never recover from. After this, after being with this man, with. With Goldie. The purity was gone. And Goldie knew it. And now Ricardo knew it. And now Ricardo had to make sure that Bjork knew it. So Ricardo took his pen to paper. He found Bjork's London address and wrote Bjork countless letters. And not one of them was returned. And this further fueled Ricardo's rage. After all, he'd given her the best of him. Why wouldn't she acknowledge him? Why wouldn't she write back? Did she think she was better than him? And there was that old song, Murder, he said. It was the B side to the original version of it's oh so Quiet, the song Bjork covered and released on her second album. The actress Betty Hutton first recorded the American version back in 1951. Murder, he said. The song. Bjork must have heard that song. And that song was this situation that Ricardo now found himself in. In that song, the singer makes fun of the man pursuing her. The singer thinks her suitor is beneath her because of the way that he talks. Murder, he says. Like some classless buffoon not knowing how to converse in polite society. That's what this was. Bjork the celebrity. Bjork the famous artist. Bjork the stylish white songstress fashionably dating the black dj, thought Ricardo, the part time exterminator. He was the classless buffoon in this situation. And that must have been it. Just like that old song. Yes, just like that. He was beneath her. But how could she think that way? Bjork didn't know him. Bjork didn't know what made him think the way he thought or love the way he loved. How could she? She didn't return his fucking letters. Did she even read them? Did she even care at all about him? Why? Why didn't she return his letters? Ricardo Lopez slipped into madness and thought murder, he said. Okay. Then one final letter to my love.
- [26:27]
Ricardo Lopez (voice from tapes)
I am the angel of death, sir.
- [26:33]
Jake Brennan
The authorities thanked the housing manager for making the call and politely asked him to vacate the premises, but not to go too far in case they needed him for anything else. The lead crime scene investigator saw the video camera set up in Ricardo's apartment, and he immediately delegated a junior officer to start reviewing the tape to get to the bottom of just one the fuck it was that had happened in this hellhole of an apartment over the past few days. In no time, the authorities discovered on that tape a reality far worse than the horror show they were currently standing smack dab in the middle of. One of the camera's videotapes revealed that Ricardo Lopez had indeed drafted one final letter to his love to the international pop star Bjork, and that Ricardo Lopez had placed that letter in a box which, upon opening, would trigger an explosive device that would spray deadly sulfuric acid all over Bjork's face. Before this happened, though, Bjork would know from the letter in the box who Ricardo Lopez was. And that was the point. She had to know. Before Bjork died, she had to know who he was. And now it was only a matter of time before that happened, because that letter and that letter bomb, that package, was on its way via international mail to Bjork's London apartment, and it would arrive in no more than four days. We'll be right back after this. Word, word, Word.
- [28:05]
Psychology of Your 20s Host
May is mental health awareness month, and your 20s, they can feel like a lot. On the psychology of your 20s podcast, we unpack the anxiety, the overthinking, the heartbreak, the identity crisis, all of it that comes with being in your 20s. Because if you've ever thought, is anybody else feeling this way? They definitely are.
- [28:28]
Psychology of Your 20s Guest 1
I feel like my 20s was a process of checking off everything that I was not good at to get to what I was good at. Oftentimes, we take everything a little bit too seriously and we get lost in things that we later on decide weren't even important to us to begin with.
- [28:44]
Psychology of Your 20s Guest 2
There was a large chunk of my twenties that I like, was just so wanting to, like, be out of that phase, out of my skin. And I just, like, really regret not living in the present more each week.
- [28:53]
Psychology of Your 20s Host
We break down the science behind what you're going through and give you real tools to navigate it. Your 20s aren't about having it all figured out. They're about understanding yourself just a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:12]
Chelsea Handler
This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler. We have some fantastic guests like Emilia Clarke.
- [29:18]
Chelsea Handler Guest
When, like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?
- [29:26]
Chelsea Handler
I'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.
- [29:31]
Chelsea Handler Guest
I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bottle. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me, like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashians have me over there. Everybody's going and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been sleepwalking.
- [29:53]
David Oyelowo I love this podcast. Whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight, straight for the guts.
- [30:03]
Chelsea Handler
Guy Branham so anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurbin.
- [30:08]
Chelsea Handler Guest
Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was gonna wear, not like a life she was gonna lead.
- [30:15]
Chelsea Handler
Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way home? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Mongeau, Camilla Morrone, Carrie, Kenny Silver and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:36]
The Knife Host
Every story has a point where it's balanced on a knife's edge.
- [30:39]
Jake Brennan
That's where we begin.
- [30:41]
The Knife Host
For some, it's a confrontation no parent ever expects.
- [30:45]
The Knife Guest
They finally admit, we're here to take your children. The department has taken custody and we're here to take your kids. It was just shock and horror and desperation.
- [30:54]
Jake Brennan
For others, it's surviving the unthinkable as
- [30:58]
The Knife Guest
they're having this gun battle thousands of feet up in the air, many of the bullets start to puncture the aircraft. I thought we were going to die then.
- [31:07]
The Knife Host
The Knife is a podcast about real people whose lives were upended in an instant.
- [31:12]
Jake Brennan
We talked to the people who lived it, unpacking what happened, how they got through it, and what came next.
- [31:19]
The Knife Host
And on our off record episodes, we go even deeper into the reporting and answer the questions you can't stop thinking about.
- [31:25]
Jake Brennan
New episodes drop every Thursday on the Internet, the Exactly Right Network and the iHeart Podcast Network.
- [31:30]
The Knife Host
Listen to the Knife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:38]
Jake Brennan
What you're about to hear is the actual audio from Ricardo Lopez in the moments before mailing his letter bomb to Bjork.
- [31:45]
Ricardo Lopez (voice from tapes)
When I send a package Package will be sent to her when she is there to love. Okay? She's gonna receive the package.
- [31:59]
Jake Brennan
On September 12, 1996, Ricardo Lopez mailed his package bomb to Bjork. USPS Express mail takes about three to five days to deliver a package from Southeast Florida to London, England. Aside from a gig at webley Stadium on September 13, 1996, Bjork was not scheduled to be anywhere but home. Home in her London apartment with her young son. Over the course of the next week, the clock was ticking. Florida police, who had discovered the existence of the bomb and pieced together its intended target across the pond, notified New Scotland Yard immediately. New Scotland Yard sprung into action. A specialist operations group was assembled to counter this potential crime of terrorist obsession. The only problem was that at the moment, with the package in transit, there was little investigators could do to thwart this deadly threat except wait and pray. With the package tucked away in a cargo plane high above the Atlantic Ocean, authorities went to work informing local London mail sorting stations of the situation and what type of package to be on the lookout for. They did not inform Bjork. Authorities were confident they'd locate and destroy the deadly package long before it reached its destination. It was decided, for the time being anyway, that there was no need to notify Bjork of the impending danger. If any pesky journalists or paparazzi were to find out, it would be a much bigger, much harder to control public crisis. For now, the situation seemed contained, but time was of the essence. After her Wembley Stadium gig, Bjork settled into her cozy apartment with her for a couple of days off. Investigators get a lead on which plane the package might be arriving on. A bomb squad was dispatched to Heathrow Airport. The plane was searched and nothing. No sign of the package. No sign of a bomb. At the same time, Bjork and her son went about their daily routine in her apartment, oblivious, completely unaware of the threat against her life.
- [34:06]
Ricardo Lopez (voice from tapes)
You see all that damage?
- [34:07]
Jake Brennan
That's sulfuric acid.
- [34:09]
Ricardo Lopez (voice from tapes)
96. I burned myself a little bit in the tongue because I wanted that I blew. And this is so if you're gasser that was diluted big time with water. Instantly it touched me. Washed it off real good. It takes time for this to burn. At least a minute to to do some serious. Damn you.
- [34:32]
Jake Brennan
New Scotland Yard dispatched investigators to London sorting stations where mail passed through on its way to Bjork's neighborhood. The package was now either on a truck heading from the airport closer to a sorting station or in the mailbag of a postal worker on its way to Bjork's house. Finally, authorities moved to inform Bjork, but as of yet there was no. No confirmation that Bjork had actually been contacted. It was just before 4pm on September 16, 1996. Not quite tea time at Bjork's, but it was time to check the mail. September 16, 1996. Bjork and her son remain at home, absorbed in the lethargy that a rare off day provides. Reading, watching films on the projector, listening to music, daydreaming, drinking tea. All is calm, all is peaceful. There is no hint of the world shattering destruction making its way to Bjork's apartment. Out on the streets of London, New Scotland Yard authorities are frantically trying to weave through traffic to get to Bjork in time before the bomb does and warn her of the threat. Authorities have also descended upon mail sorting stations and are frantically searching for the packet from Ricardo Lopez. Back in America, US authorities were still piecing together Ricardo Lopez's madness. Some people give and some people take. Ricardo Lopez felt that he had given the best of himself to Bjork, and she'd taken plenty and given back nothing. This was, of course, insanity. Bjork had no idea who Ricardo Lopez was, or that he'd been trying to contact her, or that he felt aggrieved in any way. And had she known any of this? She was under no obligation to give Ricardo Lopez anything. In fact, Bjork had given plenty. She was an artist, a prolific artist, not some charlatan who worked her way up the creative arts ladder of success and manufactured pap for shock value, fabricating headline news every couple months to keep the journalists and paparazzi hooked in order to maintain a certain level of relevance. Instead, Bjork was constantly creating. She constantly walked through the world thinking about the next bit of music she was going to make, the next image she was going to subvert, the next statement she was going to drop. She was forever absorbing other people's music, films, books, fashion, processing it all and finding ways to take elements, to improve upon, to break down, to discard, and then tapping into the greater infinite intelligence to create her own music and art. Art that was truly novel. This is love. To create, to bring something new into the world that brings joy to others or that provokes thought or that compels some other sort of positive action is an act of love. It's one of the most impactful things we as humans can do in this world. Monsters do the opposite. Monsters destroy. Monsters take.
- [38:01]
Ricardo Lopez (voice from tapes)
I want to be the biggest influence on your Life, the most important one person who changed your life more than anybody else. We live in the world of monsters. Do you understand that? A world of monsters.
- [38:14]
Jake Brennan
On September 16, 1996, five days after Ricardo Lopez mailed his lethal package to Bjork's London apartment, Bjork decided it was time to retrieve her mail. She headed out her front door and walked leisurely down the path to her mailbox. And the sun burned back the London overcast, and the birds above sang over the sounds of rush hour traffic. Traffic that authorities were stuck in. Authorities who were desperately trying to reach Bjork and warn her about the impending threat on her life at the hands of an obsessed madman. After Ricardo Lopez mailed his letter bomb to Bjork, he returned to his apartment. He shaved his head. He took red and green grease paint and painted his bald skull and face a la Martin Sheen's Captain Benjamin Willard in Apocalypse Now. Snaking his way up the river toward the unimaginable, and on her way to her mailbox, Bjork was taking a completely different path. And back in Ricardo's apartment, Ricardo shaved and painted for battle. Stripped down, he grabbed his gun, certain he'd accomplished all he would in this life. And then Ricardo put Bjork's song I remember you on full blast. Ricardo looked into the camera. Ricardo breathed heavily in quick bursts to juice his resolve. Bjork blared in the background. Ricardo put the gun in his mouth. Ricardo drew quicker, heavier breaths, psyching himself up for what was to come. Then Bjork stopped singing. The song had ended. It all ended. As the camera rolled, Ricardo Lopez bit down on the barrel of his.38 caliber revolver and pulled the trigger. Once at her mailbox, Bjork held the package in her hands. She contemplated it. What it meant, who it was intended for and why it needed to be sent. Its impact when received, and what people would think. And that didn't matter so much. What mattered was how they felt, how they felt now and how they felt in the future. This wasn't some grand gesture or a work of art. It was just a package. A letter accompanying the flowers that she was sending to the family of Ricardo Lopez expressing her condolences for the loss of their son who had just killed himself while trying to kill her. That dark, syrupy, persistent substance seeping down through the ceiling of one unlucky tenant's apartment back in Hollywood, Florida. That substance that was reported to authorities by the Van Buren Apartments housing manager, that was Ricardo Lopez's blood. Five days earlier, Ricardo Lopez had videotaped his own suicide hours after mailing the package he intended to kill Bjork with. Upon discovering Lopez's body, the authorities in Florida discovered a video camera on a stand just a few feet from the corpse, as well as the previously mentioned trove of recorded videotapes. When they reviewed the tapes, they saw Ricardo Lopez and all of his madness unraveling into a of murderous rage, hell bent on killing Bjork. The tapes revealed the exact date and time Ricardo mailed his package, and from there the authorities were able to trace, track down, and ultimately destroy the package before it got to Bjork. Bjork, of course, lived and continues to create and remains a relevant artist to this day. Ricardo Lopez chose a different path, hate and destruction, and he died in disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. All right, hope you dug this episode Apple Podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on so you never miss an episode of Disgraceland. This week's Question of the Week is what is the wildest story of fan obsession from music and or Hollywood history? All right, was it Bjork's Ricardo Lopez
- [42:41]
or was it someone else? 617-906-6638 Leave me a voicemail, send me
- [42:46]
a text, be a part of the show we play, and read some of your answers on the After Party Boy
- [42:50]
bonus episode coming up right after this in your feed.
- [42:53]
You can also hit me on Instagram, facebook x&gracelandpodgmail.com leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and you might win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland Podcast All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland Ad Free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit Disgraceland for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla
- [43:58]
Psychology of Your 20s Host
He's a bad, bad man.
- [44:01]
Jake Brennan
All right, Discos, what did you think of this Bjork episode? Give us a call and let us know. 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text. Disgracelandpod on the socials. Coming up next in Disgraceland, our new ep, Ian Watkins from Lost Profits. Don't go anywhere.