The FBI Is Spying On You Too Snail Mailers, So Maybe Don't Mail Ricin
Remember the actress with bit-parts in The Walking Dead and The Vampire Diaries who called the feds on her husband, saying that he had mailed ricin-laced letters to President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg? She was just arrested. And that's not even the craziest part.
FBI agents were able to track the letters using a Postal Service program called "Mail Isolation Control and Tracking" that "photographs and captures an image of every mail piece that is processed" through the USPS. Using those images, investigators were able to determine that the letters were sent from the New Boston, TX area (where the couple lives) before being transported to Shreveport, LA for processing.
This discovery, coupled with other evidence was enough for police to arrest Shannon Guess — who is pregnant with her sixth child — on Friday. Guess first popped up on investigator's radars when she called them claiming she had found a Tupperware container of ricin and other evidence suggesting the letters had been mailed by her husband, Nathaniel Richardson. Richardson, an Army specialist, claimed Guess was framing him because they were about to get a divorce.
According to the criminal complaint filed against Guess, investigators quickly determined that the letters — saved under filenames like obama.docx and muslimbastard.docx — came from Guess's pink Dell laptop and were printed while her husband was working a 10-hour shift at an Army Depot.
Richardson wisely filed for divorce on Thursday. The soon-to-be-former Mrs. Richardson is facing up to ten years in prison.