Probe Focuses on Suspect in Anchorwoman’s Death

First there were the phone calls, a series of them last summer. An adoring fan wanted to talk about the news business, and then he wanted more.

Next came the letter: Scary stuff, in hindsight. The words were composed of letters cut from newspapers and magazines, words reportedly warning Battle Creek television news anchorwoman Diane Newton King that she’d be sorry if she wouldn’t meet for lunch.

So when King was murdered Saturday night, shot down in front of her two children in the driveway of her rural farm home, it was quickly viewed as a small-town version of what has become an unsettling national phenomenon: celebrities who have been stalked, harassed and--in some cases--killed by obsessed fans.

Authorities said Tuesday, though, that their investigation has narrowed upon one suspect--a man with no apparent connection to the harassing letter--and an arrest could be made as early as Thursday.

“We believe the suspect and the deceased were personally known to each other,” Calhoun County Sheriff Jon Olson said at an afternoon press conference. He would not discuss a possible motive, but he said investigators had “a solid case.”

King’s death shocked this peaceful rural community in south-central Michigan, down the road from Battle Creek, a town so wholesome it calls itself the Cereal City in honor of the breakfast products made there.

King, 34, and her two children, ages 3 and 3 months, had just returned from a daylong visit at her mother’s house when she was killed by a person Olson believes was lying in wait, “like a sniper.”

She pulled into the driveway of her white, two-story frame home sometime around 6 p.m., authorities say. She got out of her Jeep Waggoneer and, investigators believe, was about to help the children out when bullets tore into her chest and lower abdomen.

Her husband, Bradford King, 44, a former police officer and a part-time criminal justice instructor at Western Michigan University, told authorities he had left the house about 6 p.m. for a walk on some of the several hundred acres of land the couple leased. When he returned at 6:45 p.m., he said, he found his wife fatally wounded.

Olson said that when authorities arrived, Bradford King was in the doorway of the house, “distraught and hysterical.”

A .22-caliber bolt-action sporting rifle that police believe was the murder weapon was found on the property Monday night. The gun and seven shell casings also found have been sent to the Michigan State Police crime laboratory for tests.

King, an American Indian who was active in Indian causes, had worked at WUHQ, an ABC-affiliated station, for two years. Her primary duties were to read three five-minute news segments during Good Morning America, said Mark Crawford, a vice president of the station. In addition, King also read 60-second news spots during the day and occasionally did documentaries.

News staffers, he said, were stunned when they heard of the shooting. The station canceled the morning news spots this week because “it would be impossible for us to expect anyone to go on the air . . . and deal with Diane’s story and then move on to other news,” Crawford said.

In place of the news, they are running a brief announcement all week that reads in part: “Due to the tragic shooting death of news anchor Diane King over the weekend, we will not be broadcasting any news spots today. Diane was an important part of Channel 4 and will be deeply missed. Our deepest sympathy is extended to her family.”

The announcement then goes on to ask anyone with information about the shooting to contact the Sheriff’s Department.

The harassment of television news personalities by adoring fans or violent viewers is not an uncommon problem, and such cases were quickly recalled when the slaying was first reported.

In Los Angeles alone last year, an infatuated fan who sent letters and gifts to news anchor Kelly Lange for five years was convicted of making “terrorist threats” after he threatened to shoot her. And another man was convicted of a 1988 attempt to extort $31,000 from KTLA anchorwoman Jann Carl in return for suppressing sexually explicit videotapes of her that never existed.

The phone calls to King began in the summer of 1990. Reportedly they were made by a man who said he was interested in getting into broadcasting and wanted advice. “They were non-threatening in nature,” Crawford said.

When the man reportedly asked King to lunch, she turned him down. In October, King received the letter, addressed to her home. Olson on Monday characterized the letter writer as “apparently infatuated with Mrs. King. . . . He wanted a relationship. . . . “