Madonna stalker caught after hospital escape

A man convicted of stalking Madonna and who has "very violent tendencies" has been recaptured overnight, a week after escaping from a psychiatric hospital, police said.

Robert Dewey Hoskins, 54, who was jailed for 10 years in 1996 for stalking Madonna after he scaled a wall of her home and threatened to cut her throat, walked out of a hospital on February 3.

He was arrested Friday in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, said a spokesman for the Long Beach Police Department (LBDP).

"Hoskins, prior to his escape, had made comments to hospital staff that led the Long Beach Police Department to believe that he may have fled to the North Long Beach area after his escape," said an LBPD statement.

"This morning, officers .. saw a male subject matching the physical description of Hoskins walking down the street. Officers made contact with (him) and took him into custody without incident or injury."

Hoskins was jailed in 1996, and after his release was transferred to one hospital where he was determined to be a "mentally disturbed offender," according to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).

Last July, about a year after his release from that hospital, he was arrested again and sent to the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, southeast of Los Angeles, from where he escaped last Friday.

The LAPD launched a manhunt, and when he remained at large by Thursday appealed to the public to be on the lookout, warning that he was "highly psychotic when not taking his medication and has very violent tendencies."

Madonna testified at Hoskins' trial in 1996 that she had recurring nightmares since seeing the homeless drifter near her home in April 1995.

Her bodyguard told her Hoskins claimed "he was there to take me away... that I was supposed to be his wife, that if he couldn't have me, he was going to slice my throat from ear to ear," she said.

Hoskins returned to her Hollywood Hills estate the next month, at a time when the singer was in Florida, scaled the perimeter wall, jumped into her pool before being shot twice by a guard.