ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 1, 1996 TAG: 9608010081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
Making the newspaper for making the honor roll or excelling in sports had unexpected consequences for some Roanoke County school girls - it subjected them to obscene and threatening telephone calls.
Michael A. Obremski was convicted Wednesday of threatening to rape or abduct young girls 10 times over the past two years, calling them from a pay telephone after getting their names from sports results, award ceremonies and honor roll listings that were published in The Roanoke Times.
When police in May raided Obremski's room in Plaza Court, a Williamson Road motel, they found stacks of the newspaper's Neighbors section. Detective Jeff Herrick of the Roanoke County Police Department testified that Obremski apparently used the newspapers to compile a list of the names and telephone numbers of more than 400 young girls.
The search and Obremski's subsequent arrest culminated a three-year investigation into scores of obscene calls to girls across the Roanoke Valley. Obremski was charged with one misdemeanor and 18 felonies in Roanoke County and faces another 11 charges in Roanoke.
As part of a plea agreement reached in Roanoke County Circuit Court, prosecutors agreed to drop eight charges against Obremski. In return, he pleaded no contest to 10 felony charges of threatening over the telephone to rape or abduct girls, and guilty to one misdemeanor charge of making an obscene telephone call.
Obremski will face a maximum sentence of 76 years in prison when he is sentenced September 24.
The newspaper was not the only place Obremski looked for victims. He admitted to Memphis police that he liked to hang around elementary schools in search of young girls, and he was questioned - but never charged - in 1993 about incidents in which schoolchildren were stalked in the Raleigh Court area of Roanoke.
Obremski, 42, was not accused of physically harming any of the girls he called. But Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Marian Kelley said she believes he had the potential to follow through on the threats he made.
"I think it's very likely that what started out as thoughts could have led to action," Kelley said.
In most of the calls, the former cook asked for girls by name before telling them that he was going to rape them or take them to a "special place" and sexually abuse them. Most of the girls had unusual names, making it easy for Obremski to find their number in the telephone book after spotting them in the newspaper.
The girls that Obremski was convicted of calling in Roanoke County were between the ages of 9 and 15. All of them had numbers listed in the telephone directory, and most were called shortly after their names or photographs had appeared in the Neighbors section.
After the calls were traced to a pay telephone outside the Plaza Court, police installed a hidden video camera that captured him making calls that were linked by a tracking device to his victim's telephone number.
Obremski, who has been held without bond since shortly after his arrest, did not testify Wednesday. An Aug. 19 jury trial has been scheduled for his charges in Roanoke Circuit Court.
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