The Case of the Mis-identified Letter Writer

For  Random Lengths News, it is not an unusual occurrence to receive a few letters that articulate a position that does not concur with ours. In fact, we encourage it in order to raise the level of dialog on the issues that are important to our readers and to further free expression. It was no different in our last edition, where we published a letter, “Words From an Incoherent, Cowardly Bigot.” Though we have conservative and libertarian readers and critics, it is only a minority that actually employs racially inflammatory words and descriptions to make his point.

The letter we printed was real  and written by real writer from San Pedro. Typically, this letter writer uses a pseudonym but uses the same email address when he submits his letters. Our policy is to run only letters from real people using their real names.

We at Random Lengths, have been receiving these letters from this  same person for the past five or six years. A mix of ultra-conservative and bigoted ideas (racial or otherwise), we struggled with dilemma of whether to run his letters or not. Early on, we decided to do our own Internet sleuthing to figure out the writer’s identity. We discovered his real identity years ago, but ultimately elected not to run letters where he doesn’t use his real name. The letter writer only became embolden and submitted increasingly incendiary letters, without his real name.

This past month, fed up with staying quiet on this person’s diatribes, we decided to expose him for the person he is. We used the research that was originally used to uncover the anonymous letter writer’s identity to run his letter.

We, however, mistakenly used the wrong surname of Unvert to identify this writer. The His actual name is Richard Paoletti– a name were able to connect to his email address. We regret the confusion that was caused by this error.