In an Age of TV News "Personalities," Stalking Is a Problem No One Talks About

It was on a Monday in May when a mentally ill man began to menace George Kessler, a meteorologist for Channel 6 in Duluth, Minnesota. "I came in to work that day, and my voice mail box was full," Kessler, thirty-- four, says now, two years later. The caller, a one-time inmate of a psychiatric institution, believed that Kessler was belittling him during the 10 P.M. weather report. For one thing, he imagined that the weatherman was peppering the live forecast with remarks that the caller was homosexual.

"If I were you, I would not have said what you said about me on TV," the man growled into the phone. "If I were you I'd start using your head, not only for the weather, but for your own personal life, too, or you're going to find out the hard way, my friend. I can definitely do something about it and God bestowed upon me the power to do so .... You ain't getting away with what you done to me."

Kessler, like many television reporters, had received his share of odd phone calls before - there was the man who believed the government was keeping him from getting the weather report, and the woman who thought the news coming from her television was being broadcast only to her. Still, it had never occurred to Kessler, a light-hearted, prone-to-joking kind of fellow, that there was a chance a viewer might hurt -- or even kill, as the stalker threatened -- him, his wife, and their two children. After all, he worked in a small television market and lived in a small town. Duluth's population is less than 87,000. When asked to do on-air promotions featuring his whole family, Kessler didn't think twice about it; those spots, incidentally, beamed into thousands of homes a few weeks before the harassment started.

As it happens, the stalker originally was fixated on the station's female evening anchor, and he used to leave her phone messages describing his love for her. The woman didn't give the calls much attention. The stalker grew angry and turned on Kessler. In the stalker's mind, Kessler was ruining his chances with the woman by saying disparaging things about him on TV.