The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office has identified onetime American Idol contestant Paula Goodspeed as the female fan found dead in front of Paula Abdul's home Tuesday evening. E! News has exclusively learned the tragic incident was not Goodspeed's first attempt at reencountering the TV judge.
Sources say the 30-year-old Goodspeed had been obsessed with Abdul for the past 17 years. Her fixation led her to twice auditioning to appear on American Idol, including her now-infamous, Simon Cowell-maligned 2005 audition in Austin.
Goodspeed's death Tuesday night, which police suspect was a suicide, was not her first house call to Abdul's Sherman Oaks abode.
Sources tell E! News that two or three months ago, Goodspeed tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills outside the residence.
Abdul was not home for either incident. She was alerted to Goodspeed's death Wednesday morning, while at Los Angeles' Kodak Theatre taping segments for Idol's Hollywood Week.
"I am deeply shocked and saddened," Abdul said in a statement earlier today.
But according to sources, Abdul was well aware of Goodspeed's obsession.
Prior to her death, Goodspeed sent Abdul several threatening letters and left her packages. Goodspeed also repeatedly tried to contact Abdul, albeit unsuccessfully.
Abdul was even alerted in recent weeks that Goodspeed may come calling, but they never met face-to-face.
Although she had not updated her MySpace page since April 29, 2007, Goodspeed did chronicle her season-five audition and had even posted a photo of Abdul licking her lips under the caption, "My secret crush, shhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!"
After detailing her tryout evisceration by Cowell and Randy Jackson, and noting that the show misconstrued some aspects of her admiration for Abdul, Goodspeed wrote that in hindsight she "wasn't ready to put [herself] out there."
"It's very hard reading such awful things being written about yourself...or hearing things being said...not like a lot of people would understand what it's like having so many haters, just because I made the mistake of trying out for a singing competition before I was ~even~ ready vocally, emotionally and physically.
"I have to believe there is ~something good about me..."
Neither Fox nor Fremantle, the production company behind American Idol, has commented on the death.
(Originally published Nov. 12, 2008, at 12:31 p.m. PT.)