An obsessed triple j listener has been sentenced to five years in prison, with a non-parole period of three years, for continuously sending threatening messages to the station, threatening to kill staff and demanding money.
As The Age reports, the “dangerously obsessed” Nicholas John Williams pleaded guilty to two charges in the Victorian County Court last month, including extortion with threats to kill and inflict injury.
The 40-year-old former truck driver was charged over 15 text messages he sent to the station over a one-month period between December 2014 and January 2015, including threats to a specific triple j presenter.
Williams was apparently angered by the fact that he missed out on tickets to the station’s 40th anniversary party and began sending the threatening and at-time sexually explicit messages to the station’s text line.
“If I don’t get an invite to this big event I’m gunna walk into the ABC store and stab the closest girl. Work it out,” one text read. “If I don’t get my ten grand I’m gunna find [the presenter’s] house and kill her daughter,” read another.
Judge Richard Smith said Williams “developed a dangerous and unhealthy obsession with regard to [his] messaging of Triple J presenters”, regularly texting the station over a number of years to complain about the playlist and presenters.
“You formed the belief that your contribution had been an important one and that Triple J had profited from their introduction of such messaging from you,” Judge Smith said, calling his threats against a presenter’s daughter “cowardly and horrific”.
One psychiatrist found that Williams, who has a history of drug use and has served 18 separate prison terms, had a “morbid and delusional infatuation” with the national youth broadcaster.
