Philadelphia's misbehaving news anchors are the most exciting thing to come out of the Philly media scene since AJ Daulerio! Former Philly CBS anchor Alycia Lane (pictured) is famous for slugging a cop and emailing bikini photos of herself; fellow former Philly anchor Larry Mendte made his name by hacking into Lane's email and thereby destroying his career. Today: more details than you probably care to know about the relationship between the two!

Larry Mendte was the first male host of Access Hollywood before becoming a news anchor in Philadelphia, where he worked with Alycia Lane, a fellow anchor who punched an undercover cop and sent bikini photos of herself to the wife of a sports TV personality, all of which somehow made Mendte jealous, causing him to hack into Lane's email and forward the most salacious bits to gossip journalists, which ended up getting her fired, though his activities eventually came out and got him fired, and then got him sued by her as well as charged in a criminal case. Got that? Well now Mendte has been sentenced: He got six months of house arrest and three years of probation. At his sentencing he apologized, and said this:

"Philadelphia news anchor Larry Mendte has been fired by CBS amid the FBI probe into allegations he hacked into former co-anchor Alycia Lane's computer and leaked embarrassing stories about her to Page Six." [Post]

Page Six has a "DARK THEORY" (or, if you prefer, a "bizarre scenario that seems possible") about why former Access Hollywood host Larry Mendte would want to read the email of Alycia Lane, his cop-slugging former co-anchor at the CBS station in Philly. Yammering coworkers say that Mendte was jealous of Lane's success, and "worked hard to take Alycia down." The clear implication is that Mendte may also have been responsible for leaking past gossip items about Lane's personal life. It certainly qualifies as a dark theory, but is it true? Nobody knows yet, so here's an anonymous coworker's gratuitous quote about Mendte's wife: "She's an older version of Alycia, which I find a little freaky." [P6]

Larry Mendte, the first male host of Access Hollywood, is under investigation by the FBI for reading someone else's emails. If he did it, at least he probably saw some thrilling stuff: his alleged victim is Alycia Lane, his cop-slugging, bikini-posing former colleague at Philly's CBS TV station. You can see why he'd be tempted! Early indications are that Mendte's snooping could rank right up there with Insider host Pat O'Brien's sexy drunken voicemails in the annals of gossip show host scandals.