If your Friday routine is a bit dull, go see what sort of crackpots Ken gets to interact with these days:
Today, I received a legal threat purporting to be from Ken Matherne, owner of the Global Wildlife Center. Using people smarter than I (a large set), I confirmed the email came from the Global Wildlife domain. In the email, Mr. Matherne threatens me with litigation and attempts to insult me. It has to be read to be believed.
OK – your fun was enough – since your cute story, you have hurt my Foundation, I am divorced over this thing that you think was funny. The dad that OD.
The University that I supported used state university equipment – this will be a test of how the justice system will work. I gave the same people $150K+ to support your liberal views at least that year. And yes I am a conservative, because I am paying all the taxes!
I gave you the last one. But, you are still playing with my foundation , so you give me no choice You are fucking with my daughter and I will not put up with that – I will not support the Universities and scholarships I give every year. I have given more than 52 percent to democrats over 10 years – don’t care how liberal your group is or have much dope you smoke & drugs you do – nor witch one of you is screwing who – if y’all are all boyfriends on the side – matters not to me.
You just gave me a new mission in life – to bring the real truth out!
And this is not a threat , this is a promise – I will spend the rest of my life investigating you and your partners and associates that slander people and companies, even non- profits . I am hiring a team now to work on you and your team. I want to know how your guys can be so sick to do things like this to children.
The crazy goes high octane as the exchanges continue. Oh, and do read the comments at Popehat where Ken’s readers try to make sense of the original and follow-on messages.
Update, March 6th: Now it’s Techdirt getting the crazy legal stalker treatment from the same person who had Popehat in his sights.
Today is Wednesday. At 12:49am California time this morning (2:49am in Louisiana, where the Global Wildlife Center is based), it appears that Ken Matherne subscribed to our daily email. Three minutes later, he unsubscribed. One minute after that, the general catchall email address that is the “from” in the subscription confirmation email, received a message from Matherne with the following subject line and no message:
Leaving aside the vague notions of religious salvation, we waited. Not for long. At 1:39am our time, we received a “reply” to the unsubscribe notice that just said:
With anticipation building, we continued to wait (actually, we were all asleep). Eight minutes after that email, we got the following:
What state are you registered in? And if any of your two companies are affiliated – we should start to proceed. My daughter asked me not to last night. But after you new post — I am coming!
Law is the Law !
[. . .]
I like how he is emailing us after 2am California time, where we are located, and giving us less than 6 hours to respond. While we are curious how reporting on facts means that we have started “a conspiracy,” and find it even more interesting that he appears to directly be admitting that his intention is merely to tie us up in court, we believe that he probably should have heeded the original advice of his daughter that this was not a productive path to take.
He might also want to look up the definition of what a “threat” is, because saying that he will spend the next 20 years taking us to court is pretty much the definition of a threat.
When I read through the messages both Popehat and Techdirt have received, I can’t help hearing them in my head as if read by Mr. Plinkett.
