public life for the next several years and worked in the health food industry. In 1984, he optioned the book Burn Judy, Burn for $5,000, hoping to play the lead role of executed killer Steven Judy. In his 1999 interview with E!, North spoke of his desire to play darker roles: "I was ready to play very dramatic, scary type characters. I thought maybe if I played some villains and scared the pants off of people, maybe Hollywood might take me seriously." However, the Steven Judy story never made it to the screen. In January 1986, North landed a small role in the Yugoslavian feature film Divlji Vetar (Wild Wind). Later that year, he read for the role of serial killer Ted Bundy in the television miniseries The Deliberate Stranger, but lost the part to Mark Harmon. Still interested in stories about serial killers, North decided to try his hand at screenwriting. His first script was about a 1984 prison break by six death-row inmates from Virginia's Mecklenburg Correctional Center, but the screenplay was never completed. Throughout the rest of the 1980s, he appeared with other former television stars on news and talk shows such as Good Morning America, Donahue, and Oprah. In October 1988, he acted out his frustrations toward Hollywood in a comedy sketch on an episode of HBO's Not Necessarily the News, spoofing his role as Dennis the Menace. Dressed in overalls, striped t-shirt, and cowlick, 37-year-old North portrayed an angry adult Dennis, taking revenge on "Hollywood pigs" with a telescopic rifle. After acting Hoaxes On the morning of December 8, 1988, North was at the center of a widely reported hoax. His mother received the news that he had died in a doctor's office that morning. According to a story from United Press International, his body had been found at 12:35am that morning. The article quoted an alleged doctor, Robert Tobias, whom North had actually never met. Around this same time, he also dealt with several impostors. One man, who resembled North in his youth, rented limousines and attended Hollywood parties impersonating him. At the time, North told Knight-Ridder news agency, "I'm not on the 'A' party list. I'm not a hot item, so they don't know what I look like. I really haven't worked a lot in a long time." A Minor Consideration On January 18, 1990, North received a phone call from Paul Petersen