Accountant Accused Of Threatening To Kill, "Evaporate" Prosecutor

Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau wants to hold a Queens tax preparer accountable for allegedly threatening to kill a prosecutor who's handling a grand larceny case against him. 54-year-old Jack Chang (not pictured) did a year in prison in the mid-'90s for funneling nearly $1 million from his clients to his own account; in April he was arrested on similar charges in a case that's being conducted by the same prosecutor who put him away the first time: Gilda Mariani, head of the money laundering and tax crimes unit.

At a press conference yesterday, Morgenthau accused Chang of sending two threatening letters to Mariani. One was sent via internal mail at the district attorney’s office on the same day Chang was in the office. The letter, which featured a drawing of a tombstone with Mariani's name on it, read, in part, "I finally got my 9 Mil gun and I am insane, you are responsible for my insanity and I will make sure that you get at least one for each and every year I spent incarcerated." Another threatening letter sent to Mariani's home was addressed to her husband and contained a white powder which turned out to be corn starch.

The letters also deemed Mariani "the axis of all evil in this planet" and a "f---ing arrogant monster," according to the Daily News. Officials arrested Chang at his Bayside home on Tuesday, where they also found another letter addressed to Mariani promising, "You will be captured and before you are sent to hell you will taste hell on earth." Investigators tell the Times the letter goes on to elaborate that Mariani will be "evaporated" in acid and that Chang would watch a video of the event and send a copy to her loved ones. Chang's lawyer insists his client is innocent: "All they talk about is that Mr. Chang had a motive to send these two letters, and that is probably true for several hundred people in New York City."