BY Leo Standora
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, October 2nd 2009, 6:42 AM
Above, Letterman announces he was the victim of an attempted extortion plot. This isn't his first run-in with crazies and loons.
CBS
Behind the laughs, David Letterman's life has been peppered with a scary collection of loonies and criminals.
Perhaps one of the darkest times in the talk show host's private life came in 2005 when cops uncovered a plot to kidnap Letterman's then 22-month-old son, Harry.
Above, Letterman holds a picture AP
They arrested 43-year-old Montana handyman Kelly Allen Frank and charged him with plotting to break into the "Late Show" host's isolated 2,700-acre ranch and snatch Harry and the child's au pair. Frank wanted $5 million for their return.
Frank, who previously had served time for stalking and intimidating a woman, pleaded innocent at first but later cut a deal and copped to felony theft and other lesser charges. He was sent away for 10 years in July 2005.
Five months later, two weeks before Christmas, another wacko came out of the woodwork, this one in New Mexico.
Colleen Nestler went to a Santa Fe district judge with a complaint that sounded like a bad joke. She said Letterman was somehow expressing his desire for her through code words such as "Marry me, Oprah," signals, and eye gestures.
Dave's influence forced her to go bankrupt and caused her "mental cruelty" and "sleep deprivation," she claimed. The judge bought Nestler's complaint and granted her request to order Letterman to stay 9 feet away from her and "no longer think of her."
Letterman's lawyer quickly had the "absurd and frivolous" action rescinded.
The first and perhaps best known trouble-maker in Dave's life was Margaret Ray, a Connecticut woman who drew national attention in the late 1980s when she stole Dave's Porsche sports car and then claimed she was his wife when stopped at a New York tollbooth.
In 1993 Ray trespassed at Dave's New Canaan home and camped out on his tennis courts. She spent seven months behind bars for that violation.
A few years later Ray was arrested in Westfield, Ind., - near the Carmel home of Dave's mom, Dorothy - for allegedly trying to steal vitamins and a backpack from a store.
In 1998, the 46-year-old Ray knelt in front of a 100-car freight train near a small Colorado train and was killed. Letterman called her death "a sad end to a confused life."
lstandora@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2009/10/02/2009-10-02_david_letterman_extortion_plot_just_latest_drama_for_comic_including_plot_to_kid.html#ixzz0SmR4rWv3
All I can say is life can be difficult when you are a celebrity.
Yours truly,
Brian
"mediamerlin"
Woodbridge
Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. 
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