I've never been the type to beome so angry/disgusted with something or someone that I would write an angry letter to that entity voicing my displeasure. (Obviously, I'd rather blog about it.) So it's hard for me to understand the motivation in sending angry letters somewhere or to someone multiple times. Improbable to imagine that same person going to such extremes as to be arrested for those threats. Impossible to fathom the same circumstances happening again.
And yet one Atlanta man, Evan Chaggaris, has plead guilty to mailing many threatening letters to ESPN for the second time. From 2011-2012, he sent dozens of threats to both management and sportscasters in Bristol. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
"An Atlanta man pleaded guilty this week to mailing threatening letters to ESPN. And this wasn’t the first time.
Evan P. Chaggaris, 42, waived his right to indictment with the guilty plea Wednesday, according to David B. Fein, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut.
Between September 2011 and June 2012, Chaggaris mailed approximately 24 handwritten letters to ESPN, according to court documents and court testimony. The letters contained threats to injure or kill certain ESPN personalities, Fein said."
The bizarre and somewhat troubling thing about this story is that Chaggaris has indeed previously been arrested for mailing threatening letters to ESPN. In 2006 he was sentenced to 5 years of probation for sending tens of threatening calls and letters to Bristol. That included a specific threat to an ESPN employee that he would "squash his bald head like a grape" and another that said "I’ll move up to Bristol or surrounding areas (and) hunt him down like an animal."
Believe it or not, Chaggaris used to work in sports media as a sports talk radio host who had a brief stint at KGME in Phoenix, Arizona. At the time of his first arrest, his public defender claimed Chaggaris suffered from a mental disturbance. Additionally at the time Chaggaris "was ordered to continue mental health treatments and forbidden to watch any sports commentary on television" according to the AJC. It might be easy to joke about this, but this is clearly not normal behavior and there are some serious mental health issues at hand for someone to continuously partake in this behavior.
Chaggaris faces up to 5 years in prison and will be sentenced in July for his latest threats towards Bristol.
[Atlanta Journal Constitution]
