Alphabet Caller Gets Prison Term

The so-called Alphabet Caller, who admitted terrorizing hundreds of Southern California women with threatening phone calls, was sentenced Friday in Ventura to six years in prison.

Steven Imler, 38, of Lakewood had no prior criminal record, cooperated with investigators, and was unlikely to commit new crimes if he was granted probation, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones said.

But the judge concluded that the sheer volume of calls and the “lasting and recurring pain” that they caused warranted a prison term.

“The need for punishment is paramount,” Jones said. The six-year term was two years less than the maximum possible sentence.

Imler, former telemarketing manager at a Compton filter company, had admitted making hundreds of threatening calls from his office to women in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties. Investigators dubbed him the Alphabet Caller because of the systematic way he used phone directories to select his victims, calling only homes where both the husband and wife were listed.

In a letter to the judge, Imler said he had lost control over other aspects of his life but felt totally in control when he called the women and ordered them to perform sexually or he would harm their husbands.

Imler was trembling during most of the 2 1/2-hour sentencing hearing. Before his case was called, he watched as Jones sentenced a child molester to 16 years in prison.

In a brief statement to the judge, Imler said it has been “very hard to deal with what I have done.” And he added: “I’m just really, really sorry.”

When Jones announced the prison sentence, Imler dropped his head to the defense table and kept it there for several minutes. Imler’s mother, who attended the hearing with his father and another family member, began to cry as her son’s bail was revoked and he was led off to jail.

Imler, who is separated from his wife, has three children between the ages of 10 and 15.

Typical of the way Imler terrorized women was an August, 1990, call to a Thousand Oaks woman. According to court records, he telephoned the woman at 7:10 a.m. and said he was holding her husband at gunpoint. After asking if the couple had children, Imler said, “How would you like them to be fatherless?”

As the woman pleaded with him not to hurt her husband, Imler asked her measurements and what she was wearing. Then he ordered her to remove her nightgown and masturbate while describing her actions to him. He said two men were waiting outside to rape her if she failed to comply.

Investigators said many victims ignored the threats and hung up, but some took the caller seriously. The Thousand Oaks woman, for example, hid her children in a closet, sneaked out her back door and climbed over a fence to reach a neighbor’s house, even though she was seven months pregnant, according to court records.

Three women testified at Friday’s hearing, including the mother of a 12-year-old boy who was ordered to masturbate if he wanted to see his father again.

“He’s totally ashamed,” the mother said of her son. “At first he wore a ski mask so he would not have to look at his father. . . . I want to see a sentence that’s long enough for him to think about the lives he has messed up.”

After a brief non-jury trial, Imler was convicted of attempted child molestation for that call. He pleaded guilty to 10 additional counts of making terrorist phone calls. No additional charges were filed because they would not have increased the potential sentence, Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrice D. Koenig said.

Craig Sinclair, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective, testified Friday that police reports were filed by more than 100 women in Los Angeles County and that a total of 75 were filed in Orange and San Bernardino counties. Ventura County logged several hundred complaints, he said.

But phone records at Imler’s company indicate that Imler called or tried to call as many as 7,500 people between September, 1989, and March, 1991. He turned himself in March 26 after authorities determined that the calls were coming from his workplace.

“He deserves prison because the scope of these crimes is so awesome,” Koenig said.

A defense psychologist, Philip Budd, told the judge that Imler has a “passive-aggressive personality disorder.” He said Imler made the calls not for sexual gratification, but to “get control over some area of his life.”

“He did it primarily for power,” Budd said.

After the hearing, Imler’s attorney, Richard M. Moore of Los Angeles, said his client deserved probation because his early guilty pleas spared the victims from having to testify against him. He said his client fared badly because authorities decided to prosecute him in Ventura County.

“I know he would have gotten probation in Los Angeles,” Moore said. “This is the toughest jurisdiction in the state.”

Victims who attended the hearing said they were pleased that Imler was sentenced to prison. One woman said some people don’t realize how traumatic her experience was.

“For the 10 or 15 minutes he had me on the phone,” she said, “it was as if he was actually doing the things he told me to do.”