Stripper charged with cyber-stalking Las Vegas cartoonist
By Aron Miller, Staff writer
What appears to be Ventura County's first case of cyber-stalking began at a Las Vegas strip bar.
The married man, a political cartoonist for a Las Vegas newspaper, became friendly with a topless dancer and began a fling that would last seven years.
During their relationship, they engaged in sadomasochism -- bondage, leather, whips, sex -- and took pictures.
When he finally tried to break it off, the stripper, known as Ruby Tuesday, wasn't happy, prosecutors allege. After she moved to Simi Valley, she set up a Web site that featured the incriminating photos and sexy cartoons and informed the man's family, bosses and neighbors, authorities say.
The stripper, Robin Kelly, 43, sat in a Ventura County courtroom Monday charged with two counts each of stalking, making annoying phone calls and witness intimidation, and one count of attempted extortion.
During a preliminary hearing before Judge Roland Purnell that is scheduled to end Wednesday, a Simi Valley police officer testified about the Web site and the nightmare that Jim Day's life has become.
Day, the Las Vegas Review-Journal's editorial cartoonist for the past 17 years, has been ostracized by friends and co-workers ever since the Web site hit the Internet, Simi Officer Richard Wigginton testified.
"It's destroyed," Wigginton said of Day's reputation. "He's been blackballed at work. He's pretty much been alienated at this point."
While Web sites have been used to commit crime, Kelly's case is believed to be the first of its kind in Ventura County, said Deputy District Attorney Tom Temple, a member of the office's newly formed computer crimes unit.
During the last few years, state lawmakers have amended the penal code to include electronic communication under the stalking and terrorist threats laws, Temple said.
A recent Los Angeles County case involved a man who set up a Web site advertising his former girlfriend's name and address that said she liked to get "raped and beaten up," Temple said.
In 1999, Alan Russell Neuman of Ventura was charged with making terrorist threats over the Internet when he established a Web site depicting a Ventura police officer wanted dead or alive. He received three years' probation.
Before Kelly's case, however, the District Attorney's Office had never tried to prosecute someone for alleged cyber-stalking, Temple said. Day contacted the office about the matter on Sept. 24.
In May, he had received a postcard advertising the Web site. Horrified, he checked it out and found the pictures of him and Kelly having sex, photos of his cars, house, license plate and driver's license and a map with directions to his Las Vegas home.
Soon, friends and family sent Day the same postcards and informed him they had received them through the mail, Wigginton testified. Kelly is accused of mailing the postcards, and of leaving envelopes with the photos around Day's neighborhood and at his children's school.
After investigating Day's complaint, Wigginton said he discovered the Web site was created at the Simi Valley address where Kelly works. She was arrested Nov. 13, and police have since taken down the site.
Throughout the officer's testimony Monday, Kelly -- who once performed as a WWF wrestler named The Red Snapper and claims to have battled Andy Kaufman in the ring -- shook her head vigorously from side to side, smiled and scoffed.
Purnell is expected to rule Wednesday whether there is enough evidence to have Kelly stand trial.
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