The judge's mysterious letters
A criminal profiler who analyzed threatening letters sent to a Manhattan
judge has concluded that the judge wrote them herself, the Daily News has
learned.
Since Acting Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond reported the first of
the bizarre threats three years ago, she has been guarded virtually
around-the-clock by NYPD detectives or Supreme Court officers, according to law
enforcement sources.
They escorted Diamond from her upper East Side home to the courthouse in
lower Manhattan and from there to her weekend home in Westport, Conn., the
sources said.
They guarded her at hairdressing appointments, lunch dates, and social
functions - until last week, when her armed security detail was lifted the
same day the Daily News contacted the NYPD and the state Office of Court
Administration about the case.
"She needed to justify her security detail, so she was writing the letters
to herself," one law enforcement source told The News. "It's a crazy case.
Detectives were trying to determine who was sending her the letters, and
everything was coming back to her."
Reached Thursday at Manhattan Supreme Court, Diamond expressed shock when
told of the profiler's findings, then declined further comment.
Later that day, she told the NYPD that two additional letters were sent to
her chambers with 9/11-related threats, sources said.
On Friday, Diamond denied she was the source of the letters.
"To allege that I was the one making these threats is totally incorrect and
grossly irresponsible," Diamond said in a statement released through David
Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration.
Husband a judge
The 61-year-old jurist, a graduate of New York University and St. John's
Law School, is one of the city's few Republican judges. She was elected to
New York City Civil Court in 1990 and appointed an acting state Supreme
Court justice four years later.
There, she joined her husband, Franklin Weissberg, a longtime state judge
who has since retired from the bench.
For years, Diamond handled divorces, many of them high-profile cases,
including that of Jocelyne Wildenstein and her billionaire husband, art
dealer Alec Wildenstein.
Last October, she was presiding over the bitter breakup of wealthy
investment banker Theodore Ammon and his wife, Generosa, when Theodore
Ammon was found beaten to death in his East Hampton, L.I., home.
According to law enforcement sources, when Diamond began receiving the
letters in 1999, the case was assigned to the threat assessment unit, part
of the NYPD's elite Intelligence Division. Detectives began poring through
the judge's case files.
But when investigators became stumped about a possible motive for the
letters, they called in Ray Pierce, a retired detective and founder of the
NYPD's criminal assessment and profiling unit, the sources said.
Pierce, who was trained as a psychological profiler by the FBI, reviewed 48
letters, typed as well as handwritten. Most were mailed to Diamond at her
chambers, though some were sent to her Manhattan home.
Anti-Semitic
In some of the letters, the writer called her a "pig," the sources said.
Others were anti-Semitic. Some featured a roughly scrawled heart with a
dagger drawn through it. All of them threatened her life.
One of the first letters to arrive in 1999 read: "You bitch. I see you
every day on the train. I'm going to ... crucify you. Maybe I'll see you in
hell."
Pierce told investigators he has "no doubt" Diamond was writing the letters
herself, the sources said.
They said he reached that conclusion by considering a combination of
factors: A barrage of letters would come when there was talk of her
security detail ending, or during times of terror alerts. After last Sept.
11, for example, Diamond received a letter containing baby powder during
the anthrax scare. Pierce also found the letters were written by an
"insecure woman," according to sources.
"She has a serious problem. She thrives on attention. She had a security
escort to her daughter's wedding, she's very impressed with that," Pierce
told investigators, according to one source familiar with his findings.
"There was a vicious theme in all of the letters, but an obvious failure on the
part of the person sending them to act. It became obvious after a while it was
just a farce," Pierce concluded, according to the source.
Pierce himself declined to comment on the case.
Michael O'Looney, the NYPD's deputy commissioner of public information,
also declined comment on the case.
'Credible threats'
Bookstaver defended Diamond's need for security, but would not discuss the
cost to taxpayers for three years of 24-hour-a-day protection.
"We do not discuss judicial security. Discussing that may put someone's
life in danger," Bookstaver said. "There were persistent, credible, serious
threats made against her that were taken seriously, not only by the court
system, but by the NYPD."
Diamond is not the only judge who has needed armed guards. For years, the
NYPD and court officers have protected Manhattan Supreme Court Justice
Leslie Crocker Snyder, who has been threatened by murderous drug gangs.
Another state Supreme Court justice, Ira Gammerman, got a security detail
when his name turned up on what he was told was a "hit list" allegedly
compiled by parking garage magnate Abe Hirschfeld.
Nor is this Diamond's first brush with controversy. In the summer of 2000,
the heirs of a wealthy Mexican art collector accused Diamond of using
"undue influence" to gain control of the elderly woman's $21 million trust
fund. Diamond said she was wrongly accused and a suit filed by the heirs
was later thrown out of court.
Her judicial record contains a number of notable decisions, including those in
the Wildenstein case and rulings that backed the city's efforts to close sex
shops and keep the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association from taking contract
disputes to arbitration.
No DNA evidence
For the moment, it seems unlikely Diamond, even if she is the author of the
threatening letters, will face any criminal charges. Right now, law enforcement
can't prove it, though sources say investigators are hard at work trying to
bolster Pierce's theory.
There is no DNA evidence tying her to the missives, and a handwriting
analysis also failed to link Diamond to the threats.