Shannon Rogers Guess: Former 'Walking Dead' Actress is Ricin Letters Suspect

UPDATE: Shannon Rogers was arrested on Friday in connection with the ricin letters.

A former zombie extra from AMC’s Walking Dead is a person of interest in the recent ricin letters that were sent to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Barack Obama. The actress, 36-year-old Shannon Rogers Guess, initially tipped off police that she had found a container full of castor beans, which are utilized to make ricin, and that her husband, 37-year-old Nathaniel Richardson, might be behind the letters due to this.

However, further evidence has pointed away from him and onto her. Richardson claims that it was his wife who sent the letters, and that he could not have purchased the beans himself because they were bought with a credit card, which he does not use, and because Guess knew specific details about the letters. Richardson has also insinuated that this may be a set up on his wife’s part. To make matters more interesting, and give some weight to that claim, the couple is currently undergoing a divorce. Oh, and she’s pregnant, it's messy. Thus it is unclear currently if this is an act of homegrown terrorism, or merely amateurs attempting to set up one another.

Law enforcement is currently still investigating both of them, but the threat of the letters appears to have been minimal. Law enforcement sources claim that the letters were clearly amateur work due to the low ricin levels.  The intent of the letters is currently unknown but we can speculate based on their content. The letter sent to Mayor Bloomberg read “You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional, God-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die. What's in this letter is nothing compared to what I've got planned for you.”

As Mayor Bloomberg is a widely known supporter of greater gun control it seems the stated purpose of the letter is to threaten him for this support. While this, again, may just be an amateur attempt to send letters and then blame another person, the merits of what the letter say are worth examining.

The letter seems to indicate that Mayor Bloomberg has so grievously harmed the right to bear arms that he deserves to die. While Bloomberg may be attacked for any number of things he has done, primarily the soft drink issue, to merely attack him for supporting the opposite side of an argument is pointless. Violence and threats do not encourage dialogue about the issues which face us, they only do harm.