A 65-year-old pilot has been charged with using his small plane to stalk and harass an upstate New York woman — who has accused him of first sexting her a photo of himself partially naked and bound in bed.
Michael Arnold was already under a temporary order of protection issued in May to “cease and desist from flying any and all aircraft” from being accused of four years worth of bizarre harassment from the sky.
He was arrested Tuesday night while driving to the William H. Morse State Airport in Bennington, Vermont, where he parks his single-engine Cessna 180, police said.
The senior from Manchester, New Hampshire is accused of stalking Cassie Wilusz from the skies above her home in upstate Schuylerville, about 30 miles northwest of the airport, the Albany Times-Union reported.
“He is terrorizing us,” Wilusz told the paper earlier this year.
“He flies so close to the house that it feels like he’s going to go through it. It’s a nightmare that just doesn’t stop.”
Wilusz said she and her family would be awakened at 7 a.m. several times a week by the sound of the plane, which was so close that windows and doors rattled. On one occasion, she claimed, the pilot pelted her home and yard with tomatoes.
Wilusz previously told the outlet that the trouble began when Arnold walked into her eatery, the Revolution Café, in October 2019 for some soup– and later started sending her messages.
The first was a photo in an email showing him semi-clothed and bound in bed along with several photos of naked women, Wilusz claimed.
Arnold wrote about spending time with two girlfriends at the “nudie resort in Jaco Beach” in Costa Rica, she alleged, adding that she later realized the sender was a customer.
“Then he started flying over my house, sending me pictures of my house, my pool, my backyard, of me, my family, my friends,” she told the Times-Union.
“He tells me karma is going to get me. He said I killed my dad” — who died in a fire in 2017 — “and I’m going to kill my husband. I called the police, but it never stops.”
In November that year, a state trooper arrested Arnold on misdemeanor charges and town Justice Charles Sherman issued a restraining order — but the buzzing continued, according to the paper.
The last time he flew over her house was on May 23, the day after her husband, David Alexander, 48, died of cancer, she told the Times-Union.
In May, Arnold was served with a temporary order of protection from a court in Saratoga, New York, and ordered to “cease and desist from flying any and all aircraft while the order remains in effect,” Bennington Police Chief Paul Doucette said.
Police were notified by the FBI in Albany that New York authorities had been investigating Arnold on suspicion of stalking the woman for four years, Doucette said.
An FBI agent informed Bennington police that Arnold had been flying over the home of a former girlfriend for about four years, the Bennington Banner reported.
“Officers were able to determine that Arnold was in fact flying his airplane from the William H. Morse State Airport and last seen flying west toward New York several days earlier,” he said.
Arnold made an initial appearance in court Wednesday on charges of aggravated stalking with court order violation, violation of an abuse prevention order, giving police false information in order to implicate another, attempted impeding of a public officer and resisting arrest, the Bennington Banner reported.
He posted $5,000 bail and told the judge he would like to invoke the “24-hour rule,” which gives him an extra day to consider what plea to enter and to hire an attorney.
Arnold told reporters before his court appearance that he had “not had any contact” with the woman.
“This is all a misunderstanding,” he told the Banner.
“I have no interest in that woman whatsoever. I never have. They’re accusing me of aggravated stalking. I just like to fly over town and get pictures for the community pages.
“That’s all, but she wants publicity. She’s making a big thing out of it,” he added.
When asked what his relation with Wilusz is, Arnold said, “Nothing.”
“I never had any relationship with her. I only went to her restaurant years ago. That’s it. She’s nuts. She needs mental health,” he told the outlet.
With Post Wires