SHORT TAKES : Fox Threats Writer Pleads Guilty

A woman who sent more than 5,000 written death threats to actor Michael J. Fox pleaded guilty today to three counts of making terrorist threats.

Superior Court Commissioner Sam Bubrick immediately sentenced Tina M. Ledbetter, 26, to three years’ probation and ordered her to undergo psychiatric counseling.

Bubrick also freed Ledbetter from custody, where she had been since March.

Prosecutors said Ledbetter, a Westlake Village shipping clerk, began sending Fox the death threats in early 1988 because she was upset over the actor’s marriage to actress Tracy Pollan.

Fox, 27, rose to fame through the NBC sitcom “Family Ties.” He went on to star in a number of movies including “Back to the Future,” “Bright Lights, Big City,” and this year’s “Casualties of War” and “Back to the Future Part 2.”