Stalker Goes To Prison For Threats, Mailing Dead Rat To Ex-Wife

Tampa FL

09 January, 2021

11:04 PM

Description

TAMPA, FL — A 57-year-old Indianapolis man was sentenced to four years, 10 months in federal prison for stalking and threatening a Hillsborough County woman including mailing a dead rat to her home. Tampa U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington sentenced Romney Christopher Ellis to prison on Tuesday. Ellis pleaded guilty on April 23. According to court documents, starting in 2012, Ellis engaged in a campaign of harassment against his ex-wife who lives in Hillsborough County despite multiple domestic violence injunctions against him. Ellis repeatedly violated the orders, stalking and threatening his former wife. In 2013, he was convicted of aggravated stalking but continued his harassment campaign for seven more years through text messages, photographs and videos. Courtesy Pinellas County Sheriff's Office Court documents said Ellis threatened to travel from Indiana to Florida to decapitate and set his ex-wife on fire. Ellis routinely made racially and sexually charged statements in text messages, including sending sexually explicit images of himself to her. And on one occasion, Ellis mailed a package to his ex-wife's home containing a dead rat and a black rose. In February, law enforcement executed a search warrant at Ellis's home in Indianapolis and recovered a handwritten note containing the names and addresses of his ex-wife, her family members and her friends. Because he used the U.S. Mail to send the dead rat and USB drives containing pornographic images, the case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Investigators found that Ellis had a history of serial stalking and victimizing people. As early as 1993 and continuing through Ellis's arrest in March, 14 people obtained protective orders against him for harassment, stalking, threats and acts of violence.