Yankees GM Brian Cashman (Charles Wenzelberg)
A Manhattan woman with a long history of harassment and trespassing was held on $200,000 bail last night for allegedly stalking and shaking down Yankees general manager Brian Cashman.
Louise Neathway, 35, who also goes by the last name Meanwell, claimed in an interview with a sports website that she was having an affair with the married GM.
“The defendant extorted $6,000 from the victim and attempted to extort more than $15,000,” prosecutor Eric Iverson said.
She told him that she needed the money for an unspecified medical procedure and that if he didn’t pay, she “would contact the press and informant’s family and assert facts that would subject [him] to ridicule and damage his personal relationships and professional reputation,” the criminal complaint says.
Iverson didn’t identify Neathway’s alleged victim by name, but sources said he is Cashman.
“Brian is very gratified that this matter is in the hands of law enforcement,” said his spokesman, Chris Giglio.
The complaint says Neathway met her victim in April of last year and “called and texted him” hundreds of times.
“The case before you is a long-term effort to manipulate and control the victim,” Iverson said.
Even after she got the money, the harassing calls and texts continued, the complaint says. On Monday, it said, she left him a voice mail “discussing her proposal and threatening to contact the press.”
Yesterday, the sports-gossip website Deadspin — which last year reported Cashman had been having an alleged affair with a different woman — posted an interview with a woman named “Lou” who claimed she’d recently ended a 10-month long affair with Cashman.
The site identified “Lou” as Neathway after the arrest.
Neathway told the site that Cashman called her and visited about twice a week and gave her Yankees tickets. She also showed Deadspin pajamas and a toothbrush she claimed Cashman left at her apartment.
The woman claimed she’d called Cashman’s wife, Mary, a few days ago to tell her about the affair.
“I’m finished with him destroying my life and his family,” “Lou” was quoted as saying.
Neathway was arrested outside her Leonard Street apartment in TriBeCa on Wednesday, before the item ran.
Iverson told the judge that Neathway has “multiple years” of stalking people in her background.
Iverson said she was a flight risk, citing two open warrants for harassment upstate, and that fact that she is “not a US citizen and is in possession of British passport.”
Her lawyer, Stephen McCarthy, described her as a “mother of a 14-year-old girl” who’s “held a job in the medical field for nine years.”
He said the case is about “a married man having an inappropriate relationship that ended badly.”
“The DA has bought this account of how this has happened hook line and sinker . . . We have dozens of witnesses who are prepared to place the DA’s case in complete jeopardy,” he said.
Neathway was a roller coaster of emotions in court, laughing, rolling her eyes and tearing up at various points.
Judge Abraham Clott ordered her held on $300,000 bond or $200,000 cash bail, and ordered her to surrender her passport and to stay away from the victim and his family.
Prosecutors said Neathway’s history of arrests date back to 1998 and includes two harassment charges upstate for stalking, a trespassing arrest in North Carolina, and a series of crimes in New Jersey that resulted in a felony trespassing conviction.
She was also arrested for aggravated harassment in Westchester in 2006, and was busted last year on charges she harassed a New York man she had been dating with emails, records show.
She was given a conditional discharge in the Manhattan case, meaning the incident would be cleared from her record if she stayed out of trouble until her next court date in the case, February 15.
Reached at his home near Albany, Neathway’s ex-husband, who asked not be identified, said there’s an order of protection barring her from having contact with him, their daughter and his family.
“She has orders of protection. They’re not uncommon with her, and everybody she has involvement with,” he said.
In papers filed in Manhattan federal court, Neathway said she obtained legal permanent residency in the US under the Violence Against Women’s Act, “which permits victims of domestic abuse and violence to obtain such permanent residency.”
Additional reporting by Dareh Gregorian, Candace Amos and Eric Kriss