Stalker, harasser of New Hampshire journalists sentenced to 2 years

The fourth and final man in a harassment campaign of two New Hampshire journalists and their families has been sentenced to prison.

Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani sentenced Keenan Saniatan, 36, of Nashua, N.H., to two years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release — the shortest of the sentences handed out to the co-conspirators.

He pleaded guilty to charges of both conspiracy to commit stalking and stalking across state lines in September, the same month he and his three conspirators were indicted by a federal grand jury.

The campaign in which Saniatan and his co-conspirators threw rocks through windows and spray-painted coarse words — including a derogatory word for women that begins with a “C” — and the ominous phrase “JUST THE BEGINNING” in red paint on homes was all in response to a New Hampshire Public Radio report on a man named Eric Spofford, founder of the Granite Recovery Centers, in March 2022, according to federal prosecutors.

This coverage was seen as not quite glowing and so “a close personal associate” of the subject hatched the plan. According to federal law enforcement and prosecutors, a man named Eric Labarge enlisted the help of Saniatan and two other men, Tucker Cockerline and Michael Waselchuck, to retaliate against the reporter and her editor.

Saniatan in April 2022 threw a rock at and spray-painted the “C” word on the journalist’s home in Concord, N.H., according to court documents, on Labarge’s orders, and he did the same at her parents’ home in Hampstead, N.H. Cockerline and Waselchuck vandalized the homes of the other victim and that person’s parents, according to prosecutors, in three separate incidents in April and May 2022.

Talwani sentenced Labarge last month to 46 months in prison, and sentenced Cockerline and Waselchuck to 27 months and 21 months in prison, respectively, earlier this year. Each will have three years of supervised release following their sentences.

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