O.J. Victim's Creepy Criminal Past
Stalker Alfred Beardsley once threatened to kill cop's family
SEPTEMBER 20--Memorabilia dealer Alfred Beardsley, a
key witness in the O.J. Simpson armed robbery case, is
a convicted felon who was jailed for stalking a former
girlfriend and once threatened to kill the family of a
California cop following another arrest, according to
court and police records obtained by The Smoking Gun.
Beardsley charges that Simpson and several cohorts robbed him and fellow dealer Bruce Fromong at gunpoint last Thursday in a Las Vegas hotel. The ex-athlete claims he sought to recover items that had been stolen from him, and denies that any weapons were used during the September 13 recovery effort.
The 45-year-old Beardsley was arrested yesterday in Las Vegas on a California warrant charging him with violating terms of his parole. He is currently being held in the Clark County Detention Center, the Sin City lockup Simpson departed yesterday after posting $125,000 bond.
The probation violation apparently stems from Beardsley's felony conviction for stalking a former girlfriend with whom he once lived.
Records show that Beardsley was arrested in October 2003 after a California Highway Patrol officer spotted him urinating in public (the cop was responding to a call that a male driver was blocking access to a driveway). According to a police declaration, Beardsley smelled of booze, had watery eyes, and his "speech was extremely slurred." The 6' 6", 260-pound Beardsley told Officer K.J. Durbin that he hoped to find the cop off-duty some time, "and if I would remove his cuffs...he could find out how tough I was." He also told Durbin that he had a close friend who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department and "would find out every detail about" another deputy involved in his arrest.
The second cop, Officer D. Stephens, reported that as he removed Beardsley from a patrol car, the strapping perp warned that he had a 9mm gun and "would kill Stephens' family with the weapon." Beardsley was charged with a felony for the death threat.
That case, filed in Riverside County Superior Court, soon expanded when investigators learned of his stalking of an ex-girlfriend with whom he lived. The woman, now 63, received an April 2003 restraining order against Beardsley, which the memorabilia dealer violated on several occasions. As a result, prosecutors filed an amended criminal complaint against Beardsley, charging him with five felonies and two misdemeanors.
In September 2004, Beardsley copped a plea to a single felony stalking count and was sentenced to a three-year probation term. However, within days Beardsley was again violating the restraining order obtained by Yolanda Smith.
On one occasion, Beardsley tried to have Smith's
cousin deliver messages to her. According to a
Riverside County Sheriff's report, Smith said that
Beardsley did not want her to "say anything negative"
about him because an article was being written, "about
him being a promoter for O.J. Simpson." The report
does not indicate if such a story was published.
Another sheriff's report details a second Beardsley attempt to contact Smith via her relative. Again, he had a message regarding Simpson, noting that he needed Smith and her lawyer "to set up an interview appointment with O.J. Simpson, and to get ready for trial." Beardsley's message is not further explained in the police report.
Confronted by probation officials in November 2004, Beardsley denied trying to reach Smith, but admitted contacting her cousin (though he denied trying to pass messages through Smith's kin). According to a probation violation memorandum, Beardsley called Smith a "crackpot" and claimed that "this woman is infatuated with me." A "highly upset" Beardsley added, "She won't stop until I'm behind bars." He also "repeatedly threatened to sue the County of Riverside for having to return to Court regarding this violation."
Undeterred by this litigation threat, prosecutors hit Beardsley with a felony complaint for violating his probation. Investigators alleged that Beardsley repeatedly followed and harassed Smith and made a "credible threat to harm her."
In a handwritten victim's impact statement filed with the court, Smith, a single mother who works as a waitress, wrote of being assaulted and terrorized by Beardsley and claimed that the hulking felon threatened to slit her sister's throat. Noting that she hired a private detective to do a background check on Beardsley, Smith added, " This is how I found out about the 4 prior restraining orders. After reading the reports, I became every more frightened, because I had no idea of this defendant's past history." Smith does not further describe the alleged previous restraining orders against Beardsley.
Smith's letter concluded, "The defendant has never expressed any remorse or empathy for me or any of his other victims. I feel if he is not punished to the maximum penalty for this, he will continue the stalking & worse."
Beardsley's rap sheet also includes a 1991 criminal conviction related to his operation of Hollywood's Sunset Screening Room. He was charged with receiving stolen property, a felony, for illegally possessing dozens of unreleased films like "Home Alone" and "Predator 2." He eventually copped to a pair of misdemeanors and was fined $500 and placed on probation for four years. Beardsley, who was trained as a projectionist, was also ordered to pay $4200 to the Motion Picture Association of America.
Following Beardsley's plea, ten movie studios filed a joint piracy lawsuit against him, claiming that an undercover operation caught Beardsley selling 35mm film prints. It is unclear how the $200,000 lawsuit was resolved.
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