Shannon Guess Richardson Indicted for Ricin-laden Letters to Obama, Bloomberg

Shannon Guess Richardson/IMDB

Reports about the newly-indicted Shannon Guess Richardson's alleged poison pen letters to the president, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Mark Glaze have often referred to her as if she was a working actress when the alleged crimes occurred. If you're like me, your original response to reading, "actress" and seeing titles like The Walking Dead might have been to wonder why, once you saw her photo, you didn't recognize her at all.

Latching on to Ms. Richardson's efforts to market herself as if she were a full cast member of the many high-profile projects on her IMDB entry was actually a news or blog writer's trick to draw readers into the story. Because if you really look at the IMDB page what you see is likely paid extra work, at best, nearly every role listed as "uncredited."

It's silly to snag this kind of detail about a suspect in a crime and make that the hook for a story--I know, I've done it. Had Ms. Richardson been a credited actress with speaking roles and even a marginal level of recognizability it would have made more sense.

In this case, it doesn't make as much sense because the facts of the case as currently known are pretty damned fascinating. As the Associated Press reports, Ms. Richardson, age 35, was trying "to frame her estranged husband" for the crimes.

If true, this means she went to the effort to actually make the ricin, concoct and send the crazy-sounding letters (they apparently railed against gun control advocates), then carefully frame her husband.

Her husband, who as the AP also reports, had contemplated divorcing Ms. Richardson only to reconsider "when the relationship seemed to improve."

Maybe things improved because his wife settled on a solution to her problems?

Anyway, I've been annoyed by the coverage of this case and kind of wish I'd started in on it at the beginning because I've felt like many outlets reporting on it were missing the fact that the alleged plotting, as well as Ms. Richardson's oddly complicated personal life (three marriages, five children by different fathers, her so-called acting efforts) all added up to a weird crime story that didn't need the additional grabber of calling the suspect an "actress" to somehow "juice" the pageviews or clicks.

Though I must admit, given her husband's apparent cluelessness about the whole thing, she may have been a much more gifted actress than the sizes of the roles on her résumé indicate.

[CNN.com] [Associated Press]