Couple harassed by Arizona man the woman rejected 20 years earlier, feds say

A woman now living in Indiana faced years of harassment from a man she had known in college in the early 2000s, federal officials say.

The 40-year-old Saddlebrook, Arizona, man got back in touch with the woman in 2019 after hearing that she planned to marry, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for southern Indiana said in a Nov. 23 news release. He also harassed her eventual husband.

The woman had rejected his romantic advances when they attended college together and never saw him again, prosecutors said.

The man told her “she should have died in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, that she should eat poison, and that she should go to hell,” the release said.

He sent letters and packages to her home with threatening messages, prosecutors said. Some of the packages contained insecticide and pornography.

The man also called the couple at all hours about 400 times and left 155 voicemails between October 2019 and September 2022, the release said.

He was indicted on nine counts of interstate stalking, transmitting threats via interstate communications, and making harassing telephone calls, prosecutors said.