Age no bar to cyberstalker

An 84-year-old American cyberstalker has ignored a trespass notice and resumed a terror campaign against New Plymouth author Rhonda Bartle, winner of the Katherine Mansfield Award.

Bartle has laid a complaint with Californian police about the alleged harassment by the elderly Californian woman.

Cyberstalkers face $1000 fines or a year in jail under Californian law.

In March, New Plymouth police issued a trespass notice against 84-year-old Peggy Phillips, also known as Peg Bucci, after she travelled to New Plymouth when Bartle rejected her obsessive attention over the internet and by phone and mail.

While Mrs Phillips was in New Plymouth, she used an elaborate ruse to publish a story in the city's newspaper about how she would use Taranaki as a location for a Hollywood movie of her book Ascent To Hell.

Last month, despite Bartle having placed a block on Mrs Phillips' email address, the Californian sent the author a haunting New York Times article on suicide.

Bartle believes Mrs Phillips struck up the e-mail relationship after reading her book The Gospel According To Cole.

"My book was about an e-mail affair which Peg took to be the truth."

- NZPA