As we already know: Where there’s ricin, there’s weirdness. While the life of 33-year-old Army veteran Nathaniel Richardson — the New Boston, Texas man initially suspected of sending anti-gun control-themed, ricin-laced letters to President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg this week — sounded mundane at first, the New York Post reports his wife, Shannon Guess, had small parts in The Vampire Diaries and The Walking Dead. (Her resume also boasts appearances in The Blind Side, Medea’s Big Happy Family, and an Avis commercial.) And Richardson is reportedly accusing her of setting him up.
Richardson first came to investigators’ attention when Guess called 911 to report a “Tupperware with what looked like ricin in the refrigerator,” ricin-making instructions, and online searches for President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg on her home computer. The FBI questioned Richardson for hours after discovering castor beans, which are used to make ricin, in his car, according to the Post. However, the beans were purchased with a credit card, and Richardson claims he doesn’t use credit cards. And then there’s this: “‘He says they are going through a divorce and that she was away for a few days,’ said one law-enforcement source. ‘He says it was when she got back that she found the [purported] ricin.’”
Richardson was released on Friday because there was not enough evidence to keep him in custody, though a police source says he’s “still a suspect.” Guess, a thrice-married pregnant mother of five children (with two tattoos, the ability to play the flute, and paralegal and teaching degrees, according to her IMDB profile), was then brought in for questioning. The Post says they will both receive polygraphs. Sure, this isn’t as wacky as April’s ricin letter story, where an organ harvesting-obsessed Elvis impersonator was framed by his ”longtime personal enemy” (who happened to be a tae kwon do instructor and an alleged child molester), but it’ll do for now.
