New Charges Foil Parole of Attacker of Actress Saldana

Los Angeles prosecutors filed new criminal charges Thursday against the man about to be paroled after serving seven years in prison for the near-fatal knife attack on actress Theresa Saldana.

The eight-count felony complaint effectively bars the scheduled June 15 parole of Arthur R. Jackson, who allegedly issued numerous threats against Saldana and Jeffrey Fenn, a passer-by who came to the actress’s rescue as Jackson knifed her 10 times outside her West Hollywood apartment on March 15, 1982.

Filed by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the charges mark the first use of a 1986 state law--inspired by Saldana’s case--that makes it a crime for a violent felon to threaten victims or witnesses, officials said. If convicted, Jackson could serve another seven years and eight months.

While expressing her relief and gratitude, Saldana, 34, now six-months pregnant, stated from New York that the new filing was only “an excellent stop-gap measure” and added:

“This nightmare is far from being resolved.”

Jackson’s impending parole has caused an uproar, prompting the Los Angeles City Council and 60 members of the state Assembly to ask the State Board of Prison Terms to block his parole. Gov. George Deukmejian also sent a letter on Thursday asking the board to prevent the release of Jackson, whom he called “a singularly obsessive and dangerous person.”

Jackson was convicted of attempted murder and given the maximum 12 years, but he earned a reduction of his term for good behavior, thus becoming eligible for parole next Thursday.

Authorities said last week that Jackson could not continue to be held under his current sentence for threats that he had not actually acted on.

Earned Parole Date

Good behavior in Soledad Prison had allowed him to earn a June 15 parole date. However, a prison board on Tuesday was expected to slap him with an extra 60 to 180 days for breaking windows.

At a Thursday press conference, several state lawmakers also joined Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner in calling for new limits on the ability of convicts to earn reductions in prison terms through good behavior.

Jackson, 53, is a British national from Scotland said to have a history of mental illness. He entered the United States illegally and, once behind bars, confessed to having committed a murder during a bank robbery in London, officials said.

While the Immigration and Naturalization Service has placed a “hold” on Jackson, with the intention of deporting him after his parole, a Saldana spokesman said on Thursday that that may not necessarily prevent Jackson from reentering this country to carry out his threats against Saldana and Fenn.

‘Kamikaze Spirit’

In sometimes voluminous letters from prison, Jackson is said to have repeatedly referred to his “kamikaze spirit” and a “divine mission” to dispatch Saldana to heaven, according to Gavin de Becker, a security consultant to Saldana.

De Becker said he approached Reiner’s office last week--after getting no satisfaction from other state and federal law enforcement agencies.

But Karen Bowles, assistant regional administrator in the Parole and Community Services Division of the Department of Corrections, told The Times earlier that “the law ties our hands on our ability to act on this. . . . We can’t make an assumption that just because someone says they will do something, they will.”

At a press conference Thursday, Reiner declined to characterize the actions--or inactions--of the other agencies that de Becker had contacted, including the state Board of Corrections, the FBI in Washington and in Santa Maria, and the Department of Mental Health.

Close to Death

Fenn was a water deliveryman at the time he rescued Saldana. He is now a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

Saldana, who had no blood pressure or pulse by the time she arrived at the hospital, later played herself in a movie based on the attack, on her battle from near death and on the founding of an advocacy group called Victims for Victims.

It was this group that in 1984 persuaded Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) to sponsor the law that was invoked in Thursday’s filing against Jackson.

“We are not going to stand by and let this dangerous psychotic and paranoid felon carry out this plan to ‘finish the job,’ ” Katz said. The law allows a prison sentence to be extended when a prisoner makes a credible threat against his victims or witnesses, he said.

Sentence Reductions

Katz, along with state Sen. Art Torres, chairman of the Victims Rights Committee, also said they intend to seek the enactment of legislation that would reduce the opportunity of prisoners to earn reductions in their prison terms through the “Goodtime/Worktime Credits” program.

Prisoners now can earn such credits simply by showing up for work, Katz said. “They don’t even have to do meaningful work. It’s a joke. The system ought to mean what it says.”

He and Reiner said the filing against Jackson automatically enables the Board of Prison Terms to keep Jackson in prison for an additional year by taking away his work-time credits.

Jackson also faces disciplinary actions--that could further result in the loss of work-time credits--for allegedly destroying state property and resisting the prison staff at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville.

It is not clear when Jackson will face trial on the charges filed Thursday by the Los Angeles prosecutors.

He has no lawyer or spokesman at present, and attempts to contact him through prison officials were unsuccessful.

Reiner agreed with Saldana that Thursday’s filing is only “a step in the right direction.”

Reiner said: “It takes care of the problem for now. But it doesn’t take care of it in the future. He’s going to get out of prison in some years and undoubtedly he will be as deranged then as he is now.”