A mentally ill suburban loner who mailed fake anthrax, shotgun shells and death threats to Chicago politicians was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison Tuesday by a federal judge who called him a “cowardly” and “disrespectful” paranoid.
Ron Haddad, 39, of River Forest, wrote chilling anonymous letters between 2007 and 2009 in which he threatened to butcher the families of oil company executives, former Mayor Richard M. Daley and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, among others.
He stuffed harmless white powder, an oily fake poison and jerry-rigged shotgun shells into the letters and mailed them to his victims’ offices, warning they’d be killed unless they cut taxes and left office.
Though U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall found him fit to stand trial last year, Haddad has a long history of mental health problems which he again displayed during a bizarre two-hour long sentencing hearing Tuesday.
Acting as his own attorney, Haddad continued to maintain his innocence and ranted about cases entirely unconnected to his own, including the case of the death of David Koschman at the hands of Daley’s nephew, R.J. Vanecko.
“Everything they’ve said is a flat out lie,” he said of the government. “Oh, I’m this big bad danger to the community,” he added sarcastically.
But Kendall told him he had caused a “hellish day” for office staff who opened his threatening letters and feared they may have contracted anthrax. Though the shotgun shells he connected to party poppers did not explode when the letters were opened, the victims’ terror was real, she said.
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“If someone opposes your will, you believe that it is appropriate for you to instill fear in them,” she said, noting that he had fired five attorneys appointed to represent him, one of whom whose face he spat in.
The judge added that his mental health problems were a “double edged sword” — both the cause of the paranoia and the anger that motivated his crimes and the barrier to him getting the help he needs.
Haddad, who asked to be sentenced to the three and a half years he has already served, twitched and repeatedly interrupted the judge during the hearing, continuing to argue even after the sentence was imposed.
He has filed dozens of motions littered with nonsensical legal jargon since his 2009 capture. The dense and unhinged style of those motions mirrors that of his letter threats, in which he ranted that a victim’s family would be “viciously mutilated, burned and killed without the slightest mercy.”
The late former Ald. Bernie Stone and Daley’s nephew, investment banker William R. Daley, both testified at Haddad’s trial last year that they were terrified when they opened jerry-rigged letters Haddad sent them.
