Authorities on Tuesday indicted a Ventura County man accused of threatening to rape and kill the daughter of a woman he has allegedly been harassing since 1991.
Serge Agopian, a 49-year-old Port Hueneme resident, anonymously sent three identical messages through email and letters to the younger victim in April, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Agopian attended the University of California, Santa Barbara with that victim’s mother, whom he started stalking after seeing her at a party in 1991, officials said.
Agopian allegedly contacted the mother despite never having met her and started sending “unsolicited roses, cassette tapes with recorded love songs, poetry, letters, and condoms to her residence,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, citing the affidavit in a criminal complaint.
He continued to anonymously send packages, including roses with dog feces and an item that looked like a bomb, even after she moved to her parent’s home, the woman told investigators.
The woman obtained restraining orders against Agopian, which were in place for nearly 10 years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
But he allegedly kept stalking her, and in 1991 shoved her into a bookshelf at the UC Santa Barbara bookstore. Officials arrested Agopian in that incident, the affidavit said.
Agopian subsequently sued the woman for defamation. The lawsuit was “resolved” but the woman and her family continued to receive “very vulgar, lewd, and obscene letters” for many years after, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
One of the letters the daughter received in April had Agopian’s fingerprint, officials said.
The indictment against Agopian includes one count of threats by interstate communications and two counts of mailing threatening communications, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison, authorities said.
Officials arrested Agopian on Aug. 5. He’s scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 15.
Authorities did not identify the victims and only described the daughter as a student.
The Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI continue to investigate the case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
