NPR: Crime Novelist Fights Online Stalker in Court

Crime Novelist Fights Online Stalker in Court

The Internet can be a scary place sometimes. Ask the 18-year-old pole vaulter from California who has become an Internet celebrity based on one picture of her at a meet. Or people who have had their identities stolen. It's even scary for well-known people like crime novelist Patricia Cornwell.

The Boston Globe reports that her problem started in 2000 when Cornwell, then living in Richmond, Va., sued Leslie R. Sachs, who was putting stickers on his own books that hinted Cornwell copied his idea and plot. When a judge told him to remove the stickers, he "started a campaign of attacks, using various websites, against Cornwell and those he accuses of conspiring with her against him, including 'the infamous rogue judge' ... his own former lawyer, the Bush administration, the FBI, the media, unidentified thugs, US corporations, and the legal profession."

This week, another judge ordered Sachs to stop his online attacks.

Sachs, who is now in Europe, said in an e-mail to the Globe, "Even if you have to write phoney [sic] and biased articles to keep your job ... even if you feel you must kiss up to USA corporate gangsters to remain employed -- why are you taking such sadistic and Heinrich-Himmler-like pleasure in abusing a victim of those criminals?" Cornwell, who now lives in Massachusetts with her wife, is trying to get Internet service providers and search engines to help her counteract Sachs' attacks.

Cornwell's case is particularly unnerving because it shows how someone can use the Internet to defame a person and yet remain beyond the reach of authorities.

3:18 PM ET | 06- 7-2007 | permalink

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