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Jewess Judge Diamond Writes Anti-Semitic Threats To Herself New York Daily News The judge's mysterious letters By MICHELE McPHEE DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF Saturday, September 14th, 2002 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. Source: http://www.nydailynews.com |
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