Authorities Search for Writer of Obscene, Derogatory Letters : Crime: Sixty women from Ventura County and San Fernando Valley received notes. Police say they seem to have been sent at random.

Police are searching for an obscene-letter writer who has harassed at least 60 women in Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley by sending them sexually explicit notes filled with demeaning names and derogatory comments about their bodies, officials said Wednesday.

“Hi, nice lady, how are you? This is to thank you for the fun we shared and I look forward to. . .” began one letter postmarked Nov. 10 and sent to a woman who works for a Thousand Oaks real estate company.

The woman, who asked not to be identified, said the two-page letter went on to describe in graphic detail the writer’s perception of her physical appearance and her performance in various sexual acts.

“It really made me feel guilty for ever having had sex in my life,” said the woman, a single mother of a young child. “I thought, ‘What could I possibly have done to offend someone like this?’ ”

So far, about 30 women in Ventura County and 30 in the Valley have reported receiving similar letters since late April, said Sgt. Marty Rouse of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

Rouse said the letters appear to have been sent at random to women of all ages and descriptions. About 20% were sent to real estate agents, whose pictures often appear in newspaper advertisements.

“They’ve been appearing almost weekly,” Rouse said of the reported letters. So far, authorities do not have a suspect. “We have some basic ideas, but they’re only ideas. We consider this a priority. There is a viciousness to these letters. They are very sexually explicit.”

Rouse also said a slight majority of the letters had been sent to women who were Jewish, although he said that might be a coincidence because there is a large Jewish population in the area. He said there were no anti-Semitic comments in the letters.

As a result of the letters, Pat Fredericks, president of the Conejo Valley Assn. of Realtors, said she is warning agents not to put their home phone numbers on “For Sale” signs posted at houses and not to feature their photographs in advertisements.

“I really hate to recommend this, but at times like this you have to think about these things,” Fredericks said.

Law enforcement officials said it is unclear if state law would apply in such a case, given that the letters were sent through the U.S. mail.

Donald Obritsch, a U.S. postal inspector, said the person could be charged with violating federal obscenity laws, which is a felony. But he said obscenity cases are difficult to prove because “there’s a real fine line between freedom of speech and what is obscenity.”

Obritsch said postal inspectors had turned their evidence over to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department for a crime analysis. He said the letters’ recipients live in an area from Van Nuys to Thousand Oaks.

“It is too early to speculate who is responsible for these letters,” Obritsch said, adding it is “normal thinking” to assume that the letter writer is a man. Beyond that, he said, the police are working to develop a psychological profile of the type of person who would write these letters.

The woman who works in the Thousand Oaks real estate office said police told her that her letter was probably written by the same writer because it included an identical derogatory phrase.

“The handwriting was very precise, with a little shake. It was printed. It covered the page and had no margins,” said the woman, who received the letter four days after her picture appeared in the newspaper.

Soon after receiving the letter, which had a return address of a Bank of America branch on Kanan Road, the woman began to hear of letter recipients. “I felt a lot of relief,” she said. “I did not feel that I had been singled out.”

Rouse said anyone receiving one of these letters should contact Detective Ron Nelson at (805) 371-8314.