According to ABC News, the alleged stalker, 40-year-old Sheryl Finley, threatened Alexa Ray Joel on Facebook, bombarding her with over 60 messages that included scenarios involving “pedophilia, sadistic-sexual behavior, violent physical assaults and murder.”
Sources say the messages scared Alexa so much that she was “afraid to leave her Manhattan home.”
Alexa’s mother, supermodel Christie Brinkley, was also “terrified” that someone was going to hurt her daughter.
In light of the online threats, Joel hired a bodyguard to protect his daughter before reaching out to his friend Paul McCartney to see if he could give him the number for a good private eye.
The New York Post writes that McCartney “recommended a Europe-based private-security firm” which eventually tracked Finley’s log-ins on computers at a community college and a public library in Austin, Minnesota.
Local police say they found Finley in January, naked in the nearby woods, where she told them that the threats she made against Alexa were not things she wanted to do “during this life”.
Finley, who the Post reports spent time in a mental institution in 2010, was arrested and charged with a felony for stalking Miss Joel via electronic messages sent by false impersonation, and with a gross misdemeanor for stalking via repeated electronic messages.
She has pled not guilty to the charges and faces a pretrial hearing on May 3.