O.J. “Victim” Alfred Beardsley, Arrested in LA: Did He Threaten Witness?

By Art Harris, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

The Bald Truth has learned a sports memorabilia dealer who says he was robbed by O.J. Simpson and armed men in a Las Vegas hotel—and was arrested Wednesday after making alleged threats “to boil the family cat” of a witness in the case – has a history of making threats, stalking, road rage, assault, probation violations–and prison.

According to court records detailing a string of violent episodes dating back eight years and obtained by The Bald Truth, Alfred Beardsley appears to be a nutcase waiting to blow—and may turn out to be perhaps the best prosecution witnesses OJ’s defense team could ever hope to find.

“All of the witnesses in the current O.J. Simpson case come to court with a prior history of bad acts,” Simpson lawyer Yale Galanter told me Thursday. “This case should never have been prosecuted. Alfred Beardsley’s current arrest… makes that perfectly clear.”

Beardsley was jailed this time after Thomas Riccio Monday filed a criminal complaint with the Los Angeles police that he’d been threatened.

Riccio is the collectibles broker who set up the Sept. 13 meeting in Las Vegas where Simpson allegedly held up Beardsley, seizing items Simpson claimed were his.

Riccio Has A Prison Record, Too, So Voila, His Mug Shot

Beardsley is accused of violating a parole condition a judge issued in January that bars him from contacting Riccio.

It’s the second time Beardsley has been jailed in the last few months, for, according to Galanter, “a dispute with Riccio over money;” after the Vegas hotel room encounter last year, Beardsley was arrested on a California probation violation for driving to Vegas to do the OJ deal.

Beardsley’s attorney told the Associated Press his client had done nothing wrong, and accused Riccio of cooking up the charge to hype an upcoming book he’s written about the case.

The AP quoted Riccio’s lawyer, Stanley Lieber of Woodland Hills, California, as saying, Beardsley phoned his client and threatened to “boil the family cat.” While the lawyer said Riccio doesn’t have a cat, he took the call as a threat to “harm Beardsley and his family, booksellers and the publisher of Riccio’s book.”

But Beardsley’s lawyer countered that Riccio was likely disgruntled his client had the audacity to phone the publisher to complain no fact-checker had ever bothered to run Riccio’s story by him.

Convicted in 2003 of felony stalking of a Riverside County waitress, Beardsley was paroled from prison in March 2006.

In 2000, he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon for chasing down a reporter with his car he believed “part of a plot …” by O.J. and Burbank’s mayor “to get him,” according to a police statement, just one of the court documents about Beardsley you can read here on The Bald Truth.

On September 8, Simpson and two co-defendants, Clarence “C.J.” Stewart and Charles Ehrlich, are scheduled to stand trial in Las Vegas on charges they kidnapped and seized items at gunpoint from Beardsley and another memorabilia dealer, Bruce Fromong.

Everyone has pleaded not guilty, with Simpson claiming he didn’t know guns would be used and didn’t see any, and was only trying to take back what had been stolen from him.

Is Simpson Being Unfairly Prosecuted For Getting Away With Murder in ’95?

The Alfred Beardsley Files:

alfred-beardsley-2-4-04-police-declaration-re-threats-to-officer.pdf
alfred-beardsley-04-victim-2nd-police-report.pdf
alfred-beardsley-amended-felony-compliant-re-cop-threats-july-2004-pdf.pdf
alfred-beardsley-banned-in-burbank-1-14-2000-e.pdf
alfred-beardsley-city-mgr-threat-sworn-stmt.pdf
alfred-beardsley-felony-complaint.pdf
alfred-beardsley-misd-complaint-1-12-2000.pdf

(MORE TO COME)

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 9:13 pm and is filed under ART HARRIS REPORTS, O.J. Simpson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.