ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 8, 1996 TAG: 9610080061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
Michael A. Obremski, who frightened young girls with obscene telephone calls from a pay phone outside his low-budget motel room, pleaded guilty Monday to the last of a string of charges that spanned the Roanoke Valley.
Obremski, 42, was convicted in Roanoke Circuit Court of six counts of proposing indecent liberties and threatening to abduct girls whose names he picked out of the newspaper after they were credited for making the honor roll or excelling in sports.
As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop five charges against Obremski in exchange for his guilty pleas to the remaining six.
Obremski - a former cook at upscale restaurants who has admitted that he followed schoolchildren several years ago as the so-called "Raleigh Court stalker" - will face a maximum of 45 years in prison when he is sentenced in November.
Last month, Obremski was sentenced to 151/2 years for making obscene telephone calls in Roanoke County, and he still faces punishment in Botetourt County on similar charges.
Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony said she will ask that Obremski serve a "substantial amount of jail time" for the Roanoke offenses. "It was a violent crime as far as interfering with the lives" of the victims, she said.
Obremski's arrest earlier this year culminated a three-year investigation into scores of obscene telephone calls to girls across the Roanoke Valley.
The girls received the calls shortly after being mentioned in the Neighbors section of The Roanoke Times. Most of them had unusual last names that could be found easily in the telephone book. Obremski would ask for the girls by their first name, then threaten to sexually abuse or abduct them.
Police learned the calls were coming from a pay telephone outside a Williamson Road motel after several of the victims traced the calls by dialing *57.
When authorities raided Obremski's motel room in May, they found stacks of the newspaper's Neighbors section and a list of the names and telephone numbers of more than 400 young girls.
At his sentencing hearing in Roanoke County, Obremski said he was drinking heavily when he made the calls.
The girls involved in the Roanoke cases, who ranged in age from 9 to 14, received the calls over the past three years. One of them lived just a few blocks from the pay phone Obremski used.
Obremski has admitted to a probation officer that he was the Raleigh Court stalker, who infuriated parents in 1993 by following schoolchildren to and from an elementary school in the Southwest Roanoke neighborhood. Because stalking was not illegal at the time, he never was charged.
Since Obremski was arrested earlier this year and held without bond, there have been no additional reports of stalking or obscene telephone calls. "Hopefully, this is the end of it," Anthony said.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB