Masked intruder pleads guilty to 2007 attack on Connecticut arts patron and fake virus threat – NBC Connecticut

The last of the three masked men pleaded guilty to extorting $8.5 million from a wealthy Connecticut art patron and her partner in a 2007 burglary by threatening them with a deadly virus.

38-year-old Romanian citizen Stefan Alexandru Barabas was on the run for about 15 years before he was finally arrested as a refugee in Hungary in 2022.

He pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to obstruct free trade through extortion, federal prosecutors said.

Barabas’s sentencing is scheduled for September 11. If the court accepts a plea agreement, he could face a prison sentence of six to seven years, prosecutors said.

Three other men in the case have already been convicted, including the other two masked intruders who prosecutors say entered the South Kent home with Barabas, brandishing toy guns. The men then bound and blindfolded millionaire philanthropist Anne Hendricks Bass and abstract artist Julian Lethbridge, injected them with a substance they claimed was a deadly virus, and ordered the couple to pay the $8.5 million or die.

When it became clear that Bass and Lethbridge could not comply with their demands, the men gave the couple a sleeping pill and fled in Bass’ Jeep Cherokee, prosecutors said.

The next morning, the SUV was found abandoned at a Home Depot in New Rochelle, New York. Days later, an accordion case containing a stun gun, a 12-inch knife, a black plastic replica of a pistol, a crowbar, syringes, sleeping pills, latex gloves and a laminated phone card with a South Kent address was found on land in Jamaica Bay, New York.

The accordion case and knife were eventually linked to the men, as was part of a Pennsylvania license plate that a witness had seen near Bass’s property the night of the break-in, among other evidence.

Bass, who is credited with raising the profile of ballet in the United States, died in 2020. She was 78 years old.

In a statement to the Associated Press, Lethbridge said: “This has been an extremely long and arduous process. I am grateful for the professionalism and persistent work of the various law enforcement agencies in bringing these individuals to justice.”

“However, based on the sophistication of the crime and other facts, I remain convinced that there are others who participated in the planning and financing of this crime who have not yet been held accountable,” he said. “I remain hopeful that one day all those involved will be known and that they too will be held accountable.”

In 2012, during the trial of Emanuel Nicolescu, one of the intruders and Bass’s former property manager whom she had fired, Bass tearfully described how the night the three men entered the home she shared with Lethbridge, she thought she was going to die.

Bass said she was babysitting her 3-year-old grandson that weekend and had just put the boy to bed when the break-in occurred, news reports say.

“I heard war cries, a terrifying sound. I saw three men dressed in black charging up the stairs, almost as if they were in military formation,” she testified.

She said the intruders then grabbed her, threw her to the ground and tied her and Lethbridge up. According to news reports, the men then injected the couple with a substance that turned out to be a harmless liquid. Bass said the men had guns and knives, but she never saw their faces during the hours-long ordeal.

Bass testified that the attack traumatized her for months, pointing out that she and Lethbridge used to enjoy spending weekends at the country house.

“Before the break-in at her house,” she said, “I felt quite comfortable being there alone. Now I can’t stay there alone anymore.”