Obsessed Fan Convicted of Sending Threats to Saldana

The obsessed fan whose “divine mission” led him to brutally stab actress Theresa Saldana eight years ago was convicted Wednesday of sending death threats in letters penned from a prison cell.

Arthur Jackson, 55, was found guilty of all five felony counts by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury after three days of deliberations.

Jackson, who will be sentenced Jan. 8, faces up to 14 years in prison under provisions of a previously untested 1986 law barring release of felons who continue threatening victims. The law’s passage stemmed from the Saldana case.

Saldana, best known for her role as boxer Jake La Motta’s sister-in-law in “Raging Bull,” was seated in the front row of the courtroom and let out a small cry as the first verdict was read. She embraced and kissed two friends seated on either side of her.

Jackson, seated at the counsel table in his prison uniform, showed no reaction to the verdicts.

The actress sobbed during her testimony as she told of Jackson’s death threats.

“He swore on the ashes of his dead mother and the scars of Theresa Saldana that he would complete his mission of killing me,” Saldana said.

Jackson was convicted of knifing Saldana during an attack outside her West Hollywood apartment in 1982. His one-year prison sentence was halved because of good behavior. The Scottish drifter will eventually be turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to be deported on murder charges pending in his homeland.

Prosecutors said Jackson sent seven threatening letters in 1988 from the state hospital in Atascadero, 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles in San Luis Obispo County.

“The defendant is . . . still on this murderous journey that began in 1981 in Scotland. This journey has . . . only been interrupted by his present incarceration,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Gruber during the trial.