Entertainment Briefs April 5, 2010
Death threats prompt tighter security for Andrews
LOS ANGELES - First she was secretly videotaped in the nude. Now she's receiving death threats. At least a dozen e-mails had been sent to a media outlet threatening ESPN reporter and "Dancing With the Stars" contestant Erin Andrews since September, her attorney Marshall Grossman said.The messages discuss the case of Michael David Barrett, who was sentenced last month to 2? years in federal prison for secretly shooting nude videos of Andrews, her attorney Marshall Grossman said.
"He refers to Barrett in his e-mail in a way to make clear to us that situation had some influence," Grossman said, but added that the man appeared to have no ties to Barrett.DirecTV provided the emails to Andrews' representatives Thursday.
The e-mails were at first sexual, but the most recent were explicitly violent and "threatened Erin with murder," Grossman said. They also had details about location and method.The FBI has been notified, Grossman said. He said the man's identity is known to law enforcement and is believed to live on the East Coast. An e-mail message left for an FBI spokeswoman was not immediately returned.
Andrews is not yet seeking a restraining order but has asked ABC to beef up its security on "Dancing with the Stars," Grossman said.Private security also has been hired to protect Andrews and her family.
Andrews has no plans of quitting the show."She's not the type to be easily threatened," Grossman said. "She has every intention to meet her obligations."
Ivanka Trump's accused stalker freed on $10K bond NEW YORK - A self-described celebrity stalker obsessed with Ivanka Trump threatened to kill himself in her jewelry store and "commandeer" her husband's newspaper in e-mail and Twitter messages to the couple, prosecutors said Thursday.
"I won't just be ignored," Justin Massler wrote in an August e-mail to the newspaper, The New York Observer, according to a court complaint filed at his arraignment Thursday.He added in another message that unless he got an autographed photo, he would commit suicide at The Ivanka Trump Collection boutique to damage its reputation, "or my only other option will be to simply stalk Ivanka Trump in a maniacal manner for this picture by becoming nothing other than a deranged celebrity stalker," according to the court documents.
Massler, 27, didn't enter a plea. His lawyer, George Vomvolakis, said the messages didn't amount to crimes, and Massler "at no point intended to follow through with any of these comments."Massler was released on $10,000 bond, with orders to get psychiatric care as he awaits trial at his mother's home in Reno, Nev.
Trump, the daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump, declined to comment.She co-hosts NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice" and is a vice president at her father's real estate company. Her husband, Jared Kushner, is the publisher of The New York Observer and an executive at his family's real estate business, the Kushner Cos. The couple got married in October.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Lucrece Francois told a judge that Massler had stalked Trump for about two years.In Twitter messages directed at Trump, Massler said his "dream in life" was to marry her but also called her "a diseased elitist," according to the court complaint. In e-mails to Kushner and the Observer, he demanded that Kushner "surrender" a Fifth Avenue office tower, asked where Kushner lived so he could "talk some sense into him" and discussed "commandeering" the newspaper, the documents said.Vomvolakis said Massler never came closer to Trump than trying unsuccessfully to send her an $800 pair of earrings he'd bought online from her store.
Massler, who had his name legally changed to Cloud Starchaser, has grappled with psychiatric problems for years and spent time in a mental hospital, his attorney said."He's got a very eccentric sense of humor, and he thinks it's funny, declaring himself a celebrity stalker," Vomvolakis said.
- The Associated Press