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"Anyway, he was on our mailing list and used to come to all the audience appreciation days."

"It took me a long time to recognize him," Jessica said.

"I had been held prisoner in that old mental hospital maybe three days before I remembered." She narrowed her eyes slightly as she looked into the camera.

"I realized I had seen him at West End a few times--but then, as soon as that sunk in, I knew I had seen him before. I knew he had been down in Arizona." She looked sad.

"I think that was the thing that scared me the most in the whole ordeal--the moment I realized this guy had been watching me for years and years." She grimaced slightly.

"After that, frankly, I didn't care what I had to do to get out of there."

They showed how Plattener carefully videotaped each of Jessica's shows, and the elaborate archive of files and scrapbooks he would accumulate over the years. As the health of his beloved mother declined, his obsession with Jessica Wright increased.

James Plattener, as described by his colleagues where he worked in those years--the Arizona Board of Energy and Resource Management--was neat, polite and a genius, but he was also described as a geek and a freak and a loner. Nobody, however, would underplay the contribution he had made to overhauling the redistribution project of electrical power in the state.

"How can you deny the contribution of a single individual who saved Arizona residents over a billion dollars in power costs?" his former supervisor asked helplessly.

"And I gotta tell ya, the idea that the guy who kidnapped Jessica Wright was the same guy that worked for us" -He shook his head in amazement.

"No way we'd make the connection." He squinted.

"The guy had a lace doily on his office chair. Does that give you the picture?"

After his mother Lillian died, Plattener packed up and moved back into the same house he had shared with his mother in Buffalo, and took a job with the Niagara Power Project, where his father had worked for so many years. Now his obsession with Jessica Wright, who had now become a national media star, accelerated into a full-fledged fantasy world, where Plattener "knew" he and the talk-show host would be together forever, and he began in earnest to plan how to make this happen.

"This is a notebook of his plans," FBI Agent Norman Kunsa related.

"As you can see, it's hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can't read any of the contents until after the trial, but I will say he planned their every moment together for years."

Then Plattener landed a job with the New York State Energy Commission, a position that necessitated an apartment in Albany, but which also afforded him frequent trips to New York City, and a few to the West End Broadcasting Center itself.

"He was a milquetoast, vat more can I say?" Dr. Kessler was shown saying.

"We had to deal with him on our power requirements at Vest End. And the idea that he was the vun stalking Jessica..." He threw his hands up.

In a parallel story, the special chronicled how an FBI agent stationed in New York City had left the agency under an undocumented cloud.

"Oh, I can tell you what Dirk Lawson was up to," his former wife said.

"He was drinking and sleeping around with other women and hitting Atlantic City three times a week to gamble, that's what he was up to. I have children to protect, so I threw him out." Evidently the former Mrs.

Lawson had to get a restraining order during their divorce proceedings to stop the agent's midnight raids on the house. He ignored it and was arrested several times. When his superiors told him to clean up his act, he opted to resign with--what amounted to--an honorable discharge.

The sad reality of celebrity, Alexandra then explained, was that it often created a target of obsession for mentally unbalanced people.

"I

myself perhaps know this better than most. " They rolled footage of Alexandra being shot on the steps of the Capitol building eight years before by a crazed fan. Then they showed footage from the TV studio in Detroit where another crazed man had tried to shoot her seven years ago.

"After that," Cassy Cochran said when interviewed, "we had to get a top flight security person in here to de sign our system. Our first security expert was great. He was a retired NYPD captain, but then he developed heart disease and had to retire from here as well." She sighed heavily then, shaking her head. She bit her lower lip a moment and then looked up into the camera.

"That's when I hired Dirk Lawson. The Federal Bureau of Investigation told me he had handled all the security for visiting dignitaries to New York. Who better than he? I thought." She closed her eyes, shaking her head again.

"Good Lord."

What went wrong with Dirk Lawson was hard to pinpoint.

"The best definition I've heard," Agent Kunsa explained when questioned, "is an overblown ego trying to compensate for low self-esteem. He has a grandiose vision of himself, a craving for power over those around him, particularly when it came to women. One thing we know about Lawson is that he and Jessica Wright did not like each other at all and from the very start. And that Jessica, in fact, actually resembles Law- son's ex-wife, in force of personality, even a little bit physically. Their hair color, for example."

Lawson began to dream about a big score, a way of winning the recognition he deserved and money and power and glory. Very soon an idea began to form in his mind about kidnapping one of the DBS stars Alexandra Waring or Jessica Wright and then playing the hero by finding them.

"Evidently he thought Alexandra was the toughest to get to," Kunsa said, "because Ms. Waring had such high security around her from the beginning. Jessica, on the other hand, had been relatively unscathed by her fame, and she simply didn't believe that people presented a possible danger the same way Alexandra knew that they did."

Lawson, fifty-one, started an affair with Jessica's new secretary, the lonely, somewhat troubled Bea Blakely.

"I knew something was funny," one of the West End custodians said.

"They were acting funny. At night, I'd see them around, together. I figured they were working on something for Miss Wright."

When James Plattener began writing to Jessica, writing her under the name of Leopold, Lawson realized that a perfect fall guy--or at least a very good screen-was in the making if he were to actually kidnap Jessica.

"We know that Lawson then got in touch with a former CIA operative in Atlanta, Calvin Denton," Agent Kunsa said.

"Denton was in a vulnerable position and Lawson knew just how to play it to draw him into his scheme."

At this point the documentary briefly detoured to profile Calvin Denton's family, focusing on the long struggle of their second child, little Alyson, and her cruel battle with violent epileptic seizures and the failure of the Dentons' insurance to cover experimental treatments and the Dentons' subsequent descent into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Lawson had found his man. The deal was, twenty thousand in cash up front to Denton to make the snatch, and a four-hundred-thousand-dollar "contribution" from Lawson to the Dentons' little girl when the reward money was paid. No violence or force would be used; it would be a well-thought-out, humane kidnapping of Jessica Wright.

"Denton felt he had little to lose," Kunsa's voice said, superimposed over movies of Denton with his young daughter.

"He was confident he could pull it off. And most of all, he was confident he could keep Jessica Weight safe and calm throughout the whole ordeal. He had actually done some work in this area before, overseas."

And so Dirk Lawson decided to mimic Jessica's obsessed fan, and composed a note in Leopold's name that promised he and Jessica would be together soon. The note worked very well, making everyone nervous that Leopold was about to appear and do something. But then Leopold did do something. Leopold got through Lawson's own security system to stage an elaborate gift-giving scenario--the present hanging in midair in the control room to Studio B--that demonstrated a fantastic knowledge of both electrical engineering and the detailed internal layout of the West End complex.

"It must have freaked Lawson out," Kunsa said.

"Here he had just written a note in Leopold's name saying he was coming and then the guy appears. And Law- son had not a clue as to how he had gotten in. The irony was, it was Lawson's own girlfriend, Bea Blakely, that had let Leopold in."

To complicate matters further, Lawson discovered that Bea Blakely was making money on the side by supplying secrets about Jessica Wright to the tabloids Law- son told her to stop. She said maybe he better start paying her to stop, particularly since she knew a lot of other stuff that would get Lawson in big trouble. Whatever Lawson told her, evidently Bea Blakely thought everything was well between them, for she then dyed her hair like Jessica's in anticipation of satisfying a particular sexual fantasy of Lawson's concerning Jessica and one of the property rooms.

"In her journal," Detective Jefferson Hepplewhite said, "Ms. Blakely had detailed a lot of their sexual encounters. One of the fantasies they had often played out involved her pretending to be Ms. Wright, of him sur

Lawson, fifty-one, started an affair with Jessica's new secretary, the lonely, somewhat troubled Bea Blakely.

"I knew something was funny," one of the West End custodians said.

"They were acting funny. At night, I'd see them around, together. I figured they were working on something for Miss Wright."

When James Plattener began writing to Jessica, writing her under the name of Leopold, Lawson realized that a perfect fall guy--or at least a very good screen-was in the making if he were to actually kidnap Jessica.

"We know that Lawson then got in touch with a former CIA operative in Atlanta, Calvin Denton," Agent Kunsa said.

"Denton was in a vulnerable position and Lawson knew just how to play it to draw him into his scheme."

At this point the documentary briefly detoured to profile Calvin Denton's family, focusing on the long struggle of their second child, little Alyson, and her cruel battle with violent epileptic seizures and the failure of the Dentons' insurance to cover experimental treatments and the Dentons' subsequent descent into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Lawson had found his man. The deal was, twenty thousand in cash up front to Denton to make the snatch, and a four-hundred-thousand-dollar "contribution" from Lawson to the Dentons' little girl when the reward money was paid. No violence or force would be used; it would be a well-thought-out, humane kidnapping of Jessica Wright.

"Denton felt he had little to lose," Kunsa's voice said, superimposed over movies of Denton with his young daughter.

"He was confident he could pull it off. And most of all, he was confident he could keep Jessica Wright safe and calm throughout the whole ordeal. He had actually done some work in this area before, overseas."

And so Dirk Lawson decided to mimic Jessica's obsessed fan, and composed a note in Leopold's name that promised he and Jessica would be together soon. The note worked very well, making everyone nervous that Leopold was about to appear and do something. But then Leopold did do something. Leopold got through Lawson's own security system to stage an elaborate gift-giving scenario--the present hanging in midair in the control room to Studio B--that demonstrated a fantastic knowledge of both electrical engineering and the detailed internal layout of the West End complex.

"It must have freaked Lawson out," Kunsa said.

"Here he had just written a note in Leopold's name saying he was coming and then the guy appears. And Law- son had not a clue as to how he had gotten in. The irony was, it was Lawson's own girlfriend, Bea Blakely, that had let Leopold in."

To complicate matters further, Lawson discovered that Bea Blakely was making money on the side by supplying secrets about Jessica Wright to the tabloids Law- son told her to stop. She said maybe he better start paying her to stop, particularly since she knew a lot of other stuff that would get Lawson in big trouble. Whatever Lawson told her, evidently Bea Blakely thought everything was well between them, for she then dyed her hair like Jessica's in anticipation of satisfying a particular sexual fantasy of Lawson's concerning Jessica and ane of the property rooms.

"In her journal," Detective Jefferson Hepplewhite jsaid, "Ms. Blakely had detailed a lot of their sexual enounters. One of the fantasies they had often played out involved her pretending to be Ms. Wright, of him surprising her in her office or in her dressing room. Now, in this case, Bea Blakely had gone the whole nine yards and dyed her hair and set up the property room the way he had described it in his fantasy. Only they didn't have sex this time." He paused, swallowing.

"Instead, he electrocuted her, burning her practically beyond recognition."

As a diagram of the crime scene filled the screen, the voice of Agent Kunsa explained, "Lawson killed her with over a thousand volts of electricity, diverted from a major power line into the telephone line Blakely was using. The sophisticated setup was consistent with the knowledge demonstrated by Leopold in his magnetic field gift-giving scenario, and so Lawson successfully threw all suspicion for the murder onto the invisible stalker, Leopold."

In the aftermath of Blakely's death, it came to light that she had actually known Leopold and, in fact, had accepted ten thousand dollars from him to help him beat Lawson's security system.

"It was an extraordinary piece of luck for Lawson when that ten thousand dollars turned up in her bank account," Alexandra related.

"Because the authorities then assumed that Leopold had simply killed her when he had no further use other."

The thing was, Alexandra reported, not even Bea Blakely had known that Leopold, on one of those visits to West End, had bugged Jessica's office.

When the authorities failed to track down Leopold and began looking at Jessica's book publication party as means of attracting him, Lawson feigned objections to the plan.