Fan Who Threatened Anchorwoman Gets 3 Years in Prison

A West Los Angeles man who told a co-worker that he was going to shoot KNBC-TV news anchorwoman Kelly Lange was sentenced Monday to three years in state prison, the maximum penalty allowable under a recently enacted law prohibiting “terrorist threats,” prosecutors said.

Warren Sevy Hudson, 57, who had been writing the newscaster for five years, was convicted in December on one count of making a terrorist threat under a law restored to the California Penal Code in 1988, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan J. Gruber.

Hudson was “obsessed” with Lange, Gruber said. He inundated her with cards, gifts, flowers and phone calls, and spoke of her to his co-workers as if they had a relationship.

The gifts were returned, and Lange never met or spoke to Hudson, but “he told people they were engaged to be married,” Gruber said.

Most of the letters were flattering and affectionate, but others were hostile, prosecutors said.

During the trial, Lange testified that, several years ago, she received a postcard from Hudson that said “something to the effect of ‘I am going to blow your head off in the parking lot some night, and you are never going to know what hit you.’ ”

After he was fired last August from the telemarketing firm where he worked, Hudson told a former co-worker that he was “bored with life” and was going to Burbank to shoot Lange, Gruber said. Prosecutors who filed the case against Hudson last year said that he was “despondent” because he felt that Lange did not understand him.

The co-worker reported Hudson’s threats, and he was arrested Aug. 11, 1988, in a motel where he lived. Authorities found a .38-caliber handgun, a shotgun and ammunition in his room.

During the sentencing Monday, Hudson’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender James Coady, argued that his client should receive probation since he has no prior criminal record. But Gruber asked that Hudson receive the maximum penalty allowable so that he could undergo extensive psychiatric therapy before returning to society.

“He does need treatment. He does need care. Sometimes we sentence for rehabilitation, and that sentence was certainly part punishment and part rehab,” Gruber said.

A KNBC spokeswoman said Monday that neither Lange nor the station had any comment.

A recent spate of threats and acts of violence against celebrities has produced legislation designed to protect them.

Joni Leigh Penn, a woman described by police as obsessed with actress Sharon Gless, was arrested March 30 after allegedly barricading herself inside the actress’s Studio City house and threatening to kill herself. In July, a 19-year-old Arizona man described as an “obsessed fan” allegedly shot actress Rebecca Schaeffer to death at the door of her Los Angeles apartment.