Pro-Gun Walking Dead Actress Pleads Guilty to Mailing Ricin to Obama
A Texas actress and mother of six confessed today to sending pro-Second Amendment letters filled with toxic ricin to Barack Obama and Mike Bloomberg, then attempting to pin the crime on her estranged third husband.
Shannon Richardson, who contributed character acting in recent years to The Walking Dead, The Vampire Diaries and The Blind Side, had been charged in June with mailing letters containing the castor-bean-based poison to the president, New York mayor, and a gun-control activist.
She had maintained that her husband, Nathaniel, had forced her to print out and send the letters, but he told authorities that she was trying to devise a way to leave him.
But on Tuesday, Shannon told the court it was all her idea, and she had attempted to frame her husband:
"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," Richardson said in the document. Glaze is director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Bloomberg's group advocating for tougher gun control.
The letter to Obama, according to the document, read: "What's in this letter is nothing compared to what ive got in store for you mr president."
"You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns," the letter read. "Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face."
Her attorney says that in exchange for her confession, Richardson will do no more than 18 years in prison. She had originally faced a possible life sentence. Presumably, she will not get to keep any guns.
[Image: Titus County Sheriff (Texas)]