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Ivanka Trump Stalker Released After Pleading Guilty
By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 10, 2012
Modified Feb 10, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 10, 2012
Modified Feb 10, 2012
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It's been almost nine months since we last heard from Justin Massler, aka Cloud Starchaser, the man who has been accused of stalking Ivanka Trump in a number of colorful ways. After being captured by bounty hunters while on the lam and brought back to NYC, Massler was found unfit to stand trial, and spent much of the last year in a locked psychiatric ward. Now, he's pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor aggravated harassment charge (and a felony criminal contempt count for violating an order of protection to stay away from the Trumps), and has been set free by the court.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lewis Bart Stone actually sentenced Massler—who faced up to four years behind bars—to six months in prison and five years’ probation. But since he spent the better part of the last year locked up at Bellevue Hospital, the judge ordered him released. Massler, a diagnosed schizophrenic from Nevada, was curt and apologetic in court yesterday, unlike last May, when he claimed, "The psychiatric system was corrupt. I feel that I was under some supernatural influence and that aliens could have been involved. Is there a doctor who will agree with me?"
Massler had been accused of bombarding Ivanka Trump with dozens of creepy emails, drawings, texts and Twitter messages from 2008 to 2010. When we spoke with him last year while he was on the lam, he told us that the whole "stalker" thing was actually performance art, like "Andy Kaufman or Steven Colbert or some shit." He also mentioned that he was working on a book about the various psych wards he had been to: "I have like a long history of being in different psych wards, but it's all just you know, book research, like Joaquin Phoenix when he flipped out on Dave Letterman, and it turned out to be a documentary."
Tagged
bellevue hospital
cloud starchaser
ivanka trump
justin massler
manhattan
trump
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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