The decades-long stalking and harassment “career” of Jason Christopher Hughes appears to have finally come to an end.
Hughes was arrested in Staten Island, New York, at the house where he lives with his wife and her parents, by the FBI on March 17th, and charged with two counts of making threats across state lines, a Federal offense. If convicted, he’s facing up to five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine on each count.
He’s been released on $150,000 bond pending trial but is under “house arrest” and is barred from using the Internet other than for work purposes. In particular, if he makes any attempt to contact any of his past victims or anyone else does so on his behalf, he’s in violation of his bond and will get sent back to the slammer.
Hughes was arraigned on the charges in the US New York Eastern District Court on March 31st and entered a plea of not guilty on April 10th. He’s being represented by a public defender, and his next court appearance is scheduled for April 28th.
His arrest has been widely covered, but the story first broke in the New York Daily News.
The FBI, which has been working on this case for at least a couple of years were able to a) tie him to threatening emails sent to the victims via details of their content, and b) to tie the accounts used to send the emails to the IP address of Hughes’ next-door neighbor’s Wifi router.
Among the threats transmitted by Hughes to his victims, he included a detailed — and characteristically horrifying — description of how to turn human beings into “pet owls”, beginning by crushing all of their limbs with a sledge-hammer and moving on from there.
I’ll continue to provide updates to this ongoing case as news becomes available.
Other coverage:
- Man Busted For Harassing Fourth-Grade Penpal For Decades (New York Post)
- Notorious Internet Troll Carried Out Decades-Long Stalking Campaign: Feds (DNAInfo)
- She Agreed to Be a Boy’s Pen Pal in 4th Grade…Decades Later, It Caused Sheer Terror (Independent Journal Review)
- Man allegedly spends decades stalking, sending creepy letters to fourth grade pen pal (Crime Online)