North Vassalboro man sentenced for threats

BANGOR – A North Vassalboro man convicted of threatening to kill a Vermont college professor was sentenced Wednesday to 15 months in prison.

Jonathan Blumberg, 48, was ordered to complete two years of supervised release after finishing his prison term.

Blumberg was remanded to the custody of U.S. marshals after the judge denied his request to be allowed to self-report to prison at a future date. He was confined to home detention for a period of time before the sentencing.

The sentencing took place at U.S. District Court in Bangor. U.S. District judge George Z. Singal presided.

Blumberg was indicted in March 2000 for making three telephone threats to kill professor Leonard Perry.

One call was made to a student employee working in the president’s office at the University of Vermont and two calls were made to employees with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Vermont. On Aug. 22, 2000, Blumberg was found guilty of the three counts of criminal threatening following a jury trial.

Perry is an agriculture professor who works in the cooperative extension department at UVM and a man Blumberg has accused of interfering with his livelihood by dispensing information about beer hops over the Internet. At one point, Blumberg reportedly had a field of hops in Vermont and was dependent on daily hops prices for a profit.

According to court papers, Blumberg, on March 6, 2000, made a call to Assistant U.S. Attorney Carol Shea in which he threatened to “put a bullet in the head” of Perry.

A day later, in a conversation with a secretary at the Vermont U.S. Attorney’s Office, Blumberg said, “This is a threat. He [Perry] is going off the Internet or pieces of that man are going to be sent to Washington, D.C.”

On March 9, 2000, he called the UVM president’s office. When a work-study student answered, Blumberg threatened that if Perry did not compensate him, “then I’ll be the last guy Dr. Perry ever sees.”

Blumberg represented himself at the sentencing. At its conclusion, he asked the clerk to file an appeal and the judge ordered the action.