Suitor Pleads Guilty to Stalking Co-Worker

A former Torrance aerospace worker pleaded guilty this week to making hundreds of phone calls and sending threatening letters to a one-time co-worker who refused to date him. Court officials said that Lanny Brent Curry, 36, is only the second person in California to be prosecuted under the state’s new “stalking” law. Curry faces up to three years in prison.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Diana Teran said the case is unusual because the woman that Curry was harassing “didn’t even know his name until the phone calls started. Usually you hear about cases like this involving boyfriends who break up with their girlfriends. But they were total strangers.”

Teran said that Curry made more than 400 phone calls to Allied-Signal Aerospace Co. engineer Nancy Girten over a four-month period and sent nearly a dozen threatening letters. After Girten won a court injunction barring Curry from communicating with her, prosecutors said the harassment continued, violating the felony portion of the new state ordinance. Teran said that Curry continued to call Girten from jail. Curry is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 13 after a psychiatric evaluation.