Major League Baseball

New charges for accused Cashman stalker

Published Apr. 2, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

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A woman accused of stalking and shaking down New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman peppered him and his office with odd phone calls, posing as other people and disguising her voice as a man's, a new indictment says.

Louise Neathway also called Cashman's estranged wife, according to the indictment, obtained Monday. The indictment adds a slew of charges to the initial stalking, grand larceny and harassment counts Neathway has faced since her February arrest.

Neathway, a 36-year-old medical sales worker originally from Great Britain, now also is contending with charges that range from lying about her income on an application for her Manhattan apartment to lying to the grand jury - and from squeezing Cashman for thousands of dollars to harassing her ex-husband and another man.

Defense lawyer Ryan Bellantoni had no immediate comment Monday. A Cashman spokesman declined to comment.

Neathway, in her grand jury testimony last month, said she has ''done nothing of (a) criminal nature toward Mr. Cashman or his family,'' according to a partial transcript in the indictment, which was handed up last week.

Neathway is being held on $300,000 bond. She's due to be arraigned in a Manhattan court on April 11 on the new indictment.

Prosecutors have said Neathway, who also goes by Louise Meanwell, barraged Cashman with calls and text messages, asked him to pay for a $15,000-plus medical procedure and threatened to damage his reputation if he didn't comply. In response, he put $6,000 into two of her bank accounts, a February court complaint said.

According to the new indictment, Neathway also used an alias, claimed to be a New York Times employee and sometimes deployed a gadget to make her sound like a man when calling Cashman or his office. She told the grand jury the voice-changing tool was a gag and denied the other allegations; prosecutors say her explanation and denials were among various lies she told, leading to perjury charges.

Bellantoni has previously said the case stems from ''a consensual relationship that went bad.''

During more cordial times between Cashman and Neathway, he praised her in a reference letter on Yankees letterhead in July, saying he'd known her for six years and worked with her on charitable projects, according to reports Bellantoni has confirmed.

Neathway has a history of being accused of similar behavior. Her ex-husband obtained restraining orders against her upstate, and a Manhattan man brought a 2010 harassment case that had been on track to be dismissed until her arrest in the Cashman case.

In the 2010 case, Neathway was accused of haranguing the man with phone calls and emails, lurking outside his Manhattan apartment and hacking into his email account.

Neathway also is on probation from a 2008 New Jersey trespassing conviction. There, she was accused of sending a man as many as 200 text messages in a weekend, prosecutors said.

Cashman's wife, Mary Cashman, filed divorce papers in Connecticut a day after Neathway was charged. The Cashmans had been separated for a year, according to a person familiar with the family, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the matter.

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