Stevens Has Life Threatened Again

Jockey Gary Stevens said Friday that he had received another death threat, this one in the form of a letter that was mailed to him at the jockeys’ room at Santa Anita.

Stevens said that the letter, which was written in Spanish, came about a month ago. He turned the letter over to Arcadia police and they are investigating.

Stevens, who was voted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1997, received a threatening note that was hand-delivered to the jockeys’ room at Hollywood Park on Dec. 17. Inglewood police arrested two brothers in that incident, charging them with extortion, and they face a jury trial.

Stevens, who will be 38 on March 6, said that the letter he received at Santa Anita had a Los Angeles postmark. “It had letters [of the alphabet] pasted up,” Stevens said. “It was hard to read, and it looked like it might have been the work of more than one person. It could have been done by as many as three people.”

Although authorities found no connection between the first note and the death of jockey Chris Antley, Stevens is finding it difficult to dismiss that possibility.

“I’ve been riding for--what is it--more than 20 years,” Stevens said. “In all that time, I think I’ve only had two death threats, and they were really in the form of some disgusted fans yelling at me after I didn’t get a 3-to-5 shot home. Now Chris dies and there are two of them. Yes, it could be a coincidence, but you still have to wonder about the timing.”

Antley, another star rider, was found dead in his blood-spattered Pasadena home on Dec. 2. Stevens, his good friend, may have been the last fellow rider to see Antley alive. Antley’s death was first believed to be a homicide, but in January the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said he died from a drug overdose, not from the wounds on his body.

Stevens and other friends of Antley, who had a history of drug abuse, still believe that he was murdered. Stevens has been critical of the way the Pasadena police conducted the investigation. He repeated that criticism Friday when he said: “The whole thing seems like a cover-up to me. You look at that coroner’s report and try to tell me that somebody could inflict on themselves the kind of wounds Chris had. It was a half-hearted attempt from the start. They didn’t interview me until two weeks after Chris was found, and then all they wanted was 10 minutes on the phone.”

Commander Mary L. Schander, spokeswoman for the Pasadena police, could not be reached for comment.

Det. Jeff Steinhoff of the Inglewood police, familiar with the second threatening letter sent to Stevens, said that it is “possible” the two are connected. Inglewood police arrested Adam and Mark Frankel in connection with the first letter. The Frankel brothers were later released after posting bail.

“[The Frankels] were not up front with us about what happened,” Steinhoff said. “They wanted to make some kind of a deal. But there’s not going to be a deal until they come forward with everything they know.”

The two Arcadia police investigating the latest letter to Stevens didn’t respond to telephone messages.

“You just have to put these things out of your mind,” Stevens said. “You just have to keep riding. I was suspicious of that last letter even before I opened it. There was no return address. When fans write, they always include the return address.”