A man married to an actress who plays a zombie on The Walking Dead is now accusing his wife of sending letters laced with ricin to politicians.
On Friday, the FBI questioned 37-year-old Nathaniel Richardson, an Army veteran, as a person of interest in connection with ricin-laced letters sent to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Obama last week. A third letter was also sent to Mayor Bloomberg’s Washington-based gun control group. Richardson reportedly works as a defense deportment employee at the Red River Army Depot, a maintenance support facility, in Texarkana.
Richardson’s wife, 36-year-old actress Shannon Rogers Guess, tipped off police that her husband was responsible for the letters after she found a Tupperware container full of castor beans, which are used to make ricin, in their refrigerator. Guess also said that she found Internet searches related to the president and Mayor Bloomberg as well as instructions on making ricin. However, a source told ABC News that the ricin “may not have been correctly and made” and said it was “clearly amateur hour.”
During Richardson’s FBI interview, he accused Guess of sending the letters. However, the beans were purchased with a credit card, and Richardson said he doesn’t use credit cards, and, according to CBS News , Guess “knows specific details” about the letters . The couple are currently going through a divorce, although Guess is currently pregnant with her sixth child, her first with Richardson.
All three letters were postmarked May 20 from Shreveport, Louisiana, about an hour-and-a-half drive from New Boston, where Richardson and Guess reside.
Both Guess and Richardson are suspects in the case, and the FBI has set up a tent on their lawn. Both are taking polygraph tests.
Ricin is capable of killing within 36 hours. Anyone who touches the poison will suffer a non-fatal rash, but inhaling the poison is lethal.
[Photo credit: Shannon Rogers Guess / Facebook]