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Accused Letterman Kidnapper Sentenced
Kelly Allen Frank, the Montana handyman accused of plotting to abduct David Letterman's infant son has been sentenced to 10 years in a state prison.
Frank appeared at a sentencing hearing on Monday, a day earlier than scheduled, and he offered a mea culpa "for the grief that this has caused" Letterman and his family, who were not in court.
However, Frank denied hatching a scheme to break into the Late Show host's isolated 2,700-acre ranch and kidnap his 22-month-old son, Harry Joseph, and the boy's au pair and hold them for $5 million ransom. "In no way, shape or form was [the accusation] true, but nevertheless, it was devastating," he said in a prepared statement.
Throughout, Frank has maintained that he had just made a joke to a former friend that was blown out of context and resulted in trumped-up charges.
The 43-year-old contractor, who previously went to prison for a 1999 conviction for stalking and intimidating a woman, was hired to paint Letterman's sprawling retreat near the town of Choteau. Police arrested Frank in March after receiving a tip from a former childhood friend about the alleged kidnapping scheme.
Frank initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, but shortly before he was slated to go to trial in July, he cut a deal with prosecutors. He copped to lesser charges of felony theft by embezzlement for overcharging Letterman for a paint charge, a felony poaching charge, for illegally possessing a trophy mule deer, and misdemeanor obstruction of justice, for lying to FBI agents. In exchange, Teton County Attorney Joe Coble dismissed the kidnapping-related counts.
Still, the theft count was still enough to put Frank back behind bars for a long time.
Aside from the decade-long prison stint, the maximum under state law, District Judge Marc Buyske sentenced Frank to concurrently serve a five-year sentence for the poaching charge and a six-month sentence for obstruction. He'll be eligible for parole in 2008, but Coble says Frank's previous record would likely keep him in prison.
Frank was also ordered to pay $1,500 in restitution to Letterman for the overbilling and $8,000 to the state of Montana for the deer. And Buyske revoked Frank's state hunting and fishing licenses for 25 years.
Coble said Letterman intends to donate the money to a local charity.
Frank's Helena-based attorney, Jim Hunt, called the punishment "significant." The prosecutor agreed.
"The sentence was appropriate," Coble told Montana's Great Falls Tribune. "It does serve justice. It is a sentence that I believe would be close to what we had gotten had we gone through trial.
"It also is important that people know law enforcement and our office were not driven by the fact that David Letterman's family was the victim, but that Kelly Frank was the defendant," Coble continued, "and that when we were able to take a look at his prior criminal record and criminal behavior we took it very seriously."
Letterman, who publicly thanked law-enforcement officials for protecting his family after Frank's arrest, had no immediate comment Tuesday regarding the sentence.
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