Background: An envelope that enclosed a threatening letter sent by Tara Thomas, inset, to an assistant U.S. attorney in Warren County, Kentucky. (Booking photo courtesy Bowling Green Police)
A woman and former U.S. Marine in Kentucky who stalked and vowed to kill an attorney and her family — promising in one letter that “karma is paid with interest” while saying she hoped to see the attorney’s children “raped and placed into a meat grinder” — has been sentenced to a little over three years in prison.
Tara Thomas, of Tompkinsville, was sentenced in federal court on Wednesday for one count of stalking and one count of mailing threatening communications, according to a statement from the Justice Department. In addition to the three-year, three-month sentence, she will also be placed on probation for three years. Thomas is not eligible for parole.
According to a sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors, starting in September 2021, Thomas posted messages on Facebook about her victim, an assistant commonwealth attorney in Warren County, Kentucky, whose regular duties included evaluating cases for the court’s so-called “Rocket Docket,” or, in this case, an expedited docket where cases that can be resolved quickly are often filed.
In Virginia, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, for example, is a well-known “Rocket Docket” that, despite a heavy caseload, features short processing thanks to streamlined pretrial discovery processes, the Justice Department notes.
Thomas never met her victim. Her attorney did, however, for a brief session where an offer was made to resolve Thomas’ case through a pretrial diversion.
Though they didn’t meet, Thomas still posted messages on Facebook, including a picture of the victim with captions reading: “You’re going to have to put a little brains into your job instead of your nasty p—” and “B—, you violated ethics with my previous lawyer with that pretrial diversion s—. You’re done b—-. I’ll have my day in court, and you’ll go before a committee.”
Thomas also posted a photo of the victim with a “clip from a derogatory song” plus a screen capture of the victim’s Facebook page with “a clip from a song about Hitler.”
Using Facebook Messenger, Thomas then sent messages to the assistant attorney, her stepfather and her husband.
“You’re dead b—-,” Thomas wrote to the victim. “And those two f— t— children you have are f—— dead.”
She continued: “Dead. You think you’re playing hardball here? B—- you’re dead wrong.”
In messages to the woman’s stepfather and husband, she wrote: “You’re [sic] daughter’s dead,” “B—- is dead,” and “Dead.”
Bowling Green Police officers investigated and learned that the messages were coming from Thomas’ home in Tompkinsville, where she was on an ankle monitor. Police arrested and charged her and seized her cellphone that September, and roughly a year later, Thomas appeared for a jury trial in Warren County Circuit Court. That was the first time she heard her victim’s reaction to the terrifying threats. The woman cried and said she had feared for her and her family’s life.
Thomas was convicted and sentenced to a four-year stint at the county jail. At the time, she was eligible for parole in early 2023. But when January 2023 rolled around, Thomas, according to prosecutors, started harassing the assistant attorney again.
Over a few weeks, Thomas sent multiple letters to the attorney. The first contained no threats, according to prosecutors, but it did express her dissatisfaction with the victim and her testimony. The second letter was more graphic, with Thomas writing that there was a “special place in hell” for the victim and that she would “see that place soon.”
“Karma is paid with interest,” Thomas wrote.
“I hope one of the many disgruntled people that you’ve destroyed by bullying them into a s—– plea deal rapes you and your children and grinds them up in a meat grinder while you watch. By all means, share a copy of this to the court, w—-,” she added.
With her parole fast approaching, she told the woman in another letter that she was “counting every day, minute and second you’re stealing from me.”
“I want you to think of what you’ve stolen from me. I hope you live in fear for the rest of your life,” Thomas wrote.
She ended that January 2023 letter with: “You deserve to be raped and lit on fire, alive.”
On the back of one letter’s envelope, Thomas scrawled “REDRUM” in red. She admitted to doing so during a recorded jail call.
Newly charged with stalking and in jail again, she admitted her seething anger with the Warren County assistant attorney and, in the call, told her friend she wasn’t being taught a lesson.
“You’re building up my anger. It wouldn’t have gotten this far if she had done her job in the first place,” Thomas said.
She also admitted in a jail call “I sent another letter … I said something f—– up” and said: “I express how I feel in Stephen King type, Criminal Minds type ways.”
She told her friend she was “menacing” her victim, “not stalking!”
Justice Department provided exhibits depicting portions of the threatening letters Tara Thomas sent in 2023 to an assistant U.S. attorney.
On a different recorded jail call in July 2023, prosecutors said Thomas was still enraged, saying she felt mistreated, and every mistreatment solidified her outrage.
“Every time I get [sic], they do an enormous amount of strip searches here. Every time I get f—— strip searched, every time I get degraded, humiliated, I think about shooting the f—— b—- point blank,” Thomas said.
In a sentencing memorandum from Thomas’ defense attorney, it argued for leniency, noting Tomas had been traumatized since the age of 12, including being raped multiple times by a 38-year-old neighbor. Her lawyer said she testified at the trial of her rapist and endured a rigorous cross-examination that was so “horrific” Thomas and her mother had to move after, her lawyer said.
Thomas was also raped and sodomized by a high school teacher who was charged but allowed to plea to a lesser offense, the defense’s memorandum states. When Thomas later divorced in 2020, it was her first rapist’s attorney who, now a circuit judge, presided over the case.
“The man that painted her as a promiscuous 12-year-old many years ago was now deciding the outcome of her marriage dissolution,” the memorandum states.
Her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
