Walking Dead actor gets maximum 18 years in jail for sending toxic ricin to Obama

A federal judge gave Shannon Guess Richardson, 36, the maximum sentence under her plea deal on a federal charge of possessing and producing a biological toxin.
...
"I never intended for anybody to be hurt," she told the court on Wednesday, adding later, "I'm not a bad person; I don't have it in me to hurt anyone."

On the morning of May 20, 2013, she said she waited for her husband, Nathan Richardson, to go to work.

"After he left the house, I printed the mailing labels for President Barack Obama, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Mark Glaze with The Raben Group," she said in the document. At the time, Glaze was director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Bloomberg's group advocating for tougher gun control.

The letter to Mr Obama read, "What's in this letter is nothing compared to what ive got in store for you mr president," according to the document. "You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face."

At the time of her arrest, Richardson lived in New Boston, Texas. She has been married three times. On October 8, 2011, she married Nathan Richardson, a U.S. Army veteran who works as a mechanic in a military depot. As of June 2013, Richardson had five children, ranging in age from 4 to 19, and was pregnant with another. None of them are fathered by her current husband. On July 4, 2013, Richardson gave birth to a baby boy, named Brody, while in custody. Officials said that the baby was born four months prematurely, weighed only two pounds at birth, and that he needed to remain hospitalized.[17] In August 2013, Nathan won temporary custody of Brody.

A week ago Thursday, Shannon Guess Richardson traveled from her small town in Texas to meet with investigators in Louisiana and accuse her husband of a disturbing crime. Ms. Richardson, a pregnant mother of five, said she suspected that her husband, Nathaniel, had mailed three ricin-laced letters to President Obama, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and a gun-control lobbyist in Washington. She also offered hard evidence: a book of stamps that microscopic analysis revealed to be the source of the stamps on the three letters.
...
A criminal complaint suggested evidence of a frame-up.

If so, it was the second time in two months that a local grudge had spun out of control, and onto the national stage, with ricin-laced letters addressed to the White House.

The case mirrored an episode in April in which letters laced with the deadly poison were sent to the president, a Mississippi senator and a local Mississippi judge. The Federal Bureau of Investigation quickly arrested Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, Miss. But the charges were dropped and another man, a rival of Mr. Curtis’s, was arrested. That man, J. Everett Dutschke, was charged not only with mailing the letters, but also with trying to frame Mr. Curtis.

But when federal agents approached Mr. Richardson that day, at an Army depot where he works, he denied involvement and said his wife wanted to end their marriage, according to the complaint. And he offered an accusation of his own: His wife was responsible for the letters.

But when he agreed to let investigators search his car, an agent found 12 castor beans in the trunk, according to the complaint. The next day, May 31, Ms. Richardson took a polygraph examination and admitted that she had taken steps to ensure her husband would be caught — like placing castor beans or ricin powder among his possessions — because she believed he was guilty, the complaint said.
...
On Thursday, according to the complaint, Ms. Richardson confessed that she had mailed the three letters, knowing they contained ricin. But she claimed her husband had typed the letters, which focused on gun rights, and made her print and mail them, according to the complaint.