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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, May 20, 2003

20-year-old guilty in ship threat released

By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer

A 20-year-old Southern California woman who pleaded guilty last week to writing two letters threatening to kill the passengers and crew aboard a cruise ship if it pulled into a port on American soil was released from federal custody yesterday and boarded a flight home.

Kelley Marie Ferguson was ordered to stay at the home of her parents in Laguna Hills, Calif.

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U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin S.C. Chang on Thursday granted a request by Kelley Marie Ferguson to return home while waiting to be sentenced in September on a felony charge of conveying false information threatening to harm passengers and crew members aboard the Legend of the Seas.

Ferguson admitted that she wrote the notes that were left in a women's rest room on April 22 and 23 while the ship was en route from Ensenada, Mexico, to Hilo. The crew alerted authorities and the ship was diverted to O'ahu and anchored about a mile off shore while members of a terrorism response team conducted a search, which turned up no explosives or other devices that would have allowed the threat to be carried out.

Ferguson's attorney, deputy federal public defender Loretta Faymonville, has said that Ferguson was six months pregnant at the time and wanted the ship to go back to Mexico so that she could rejoin her boyfriend.

As conditions of her release, Chang ordered Ferguson to stay at the home of her parents in Laguna Hills, Calif., to wear an electronic monitoring device 24 hours a day and to have no contact with her former boyfriend while awaiting sentencing.