A 76-year-old man from Idaho will be spending the next 51 months behind bars for waging a years-long harassment campaign against a woman following a dispute over a handicapped parking space. Police say that a woman confronted Frank Sweeney in the parking lot of a post office because he parked in a handicapped space but did not have a handicapped tag on his vehicle.
After the minor incident, Sweeney hired a private investigator to find out where the woman lived, along with personal information about her and her family. He then engaged in a “crusade of harassment” against the woman, sending her numerous threatening postcards.
The postcards included references to Adolf Hitler, racial slurs, sexually charged language, and personal insults. He also sent postcards to her neighbors, warning them that she was a pedophile and sex offender, claims which were both false. He signed the postcards using the name “Carson Wells,” which is the name of a hitman in the movie No Country for Old Men.
In one case, Sweeney sent a threatening postcard to the Idaho Black History Museum and signed it using the victim's name. She was briefly investigated by the FBI, but they quickly determined she was not responsible for the mailing.
Sweeney was busted in March and decided to plead guilty to six counts of stalking. He has a lengthy criminal history, including six prior felony convictions. In the 1990s, he was convicted of shooting a New Jersey police officer with a machine gun.
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