What should’ve been a simple dispute between neighbors over exuberant children turned into a frightened family believing they had a cannibal in their midst. They began to receive mail saying their “children look delicious” and asking “may I have a taste.”
The two phrases sent to the parents in Champlin, Minnesota, were certainly a bolt from the blue, and a rather unpleasant one at that. They received the threatening letter September 27.
“Opened our mail today to this letter. Obviously my stomach started doing somersaults,” the parents posted on the Champlin community Facebook page.
The terrified family called the local police to look into the matter after they began to receive magazine subscriptions with similarly frightening lines on them.
“Instead of a name on the address label it said things like ‘tasty children’ along those lines,” Champlin Deputy Police Chief Ty Schmidt said, as cited by CBS Minnesota.
The police were able to trace the contents of the letter to a neighbor, Carrie Pernula, who was arrested and faces possible charges of gross misdemeanor terroristic threats and stalking.
The 38-year-old was apparently annoyed at the amount of noise the neighboring children were making.
“She was angry because the kids were leaving things in her yard and I think being a little noisy - being kids, the way kids are,” Schmidt added.
However, rather than look to settle the dispute in an orderly fashion, she took an option that would not have looked out of place in the movie ‘Silence of the Lambs’.
Pernula was eventually released from jail and admitted sending the notes because the kids were “always putting stuff on her porch.”