Zeta's 'stalker left hotel death threats'

A Los Angeles court was told death threats phoned in to a hotel where Catherine Zeta-Jones was staying were linked to the woman accused of stalking the Oscar-winning actress.

Detective Rodney Wagner told a preliminary hearing that phone bills showed calls to the hotel were made by Dawnette Knight, 33, who is charged with one count of stalking and 24 counts of making criminal threats.

In two of the calls, made on May 18 and 19, the caller told a receptionist: "We know she is in the hotel. We are going to kill her. She does not (expletive) around with Michael Douglas.", Wagner said.

The detective said that in a third call, on May 21, the caller threatened to "blow Catherine's head off on Sunday in Monte Carlo".

Prosecutors are trying to show Knight threatened Swansea-born Zeta-Jones because she had a crush on Douglas, the actress' husband.

On Thursday, Deputy District Attorney Debra Archuleta read a letter Knight allegedly wrote to Douglas in which she asked the actor to call her. She left a phone number on the letter that was the same as one on a mobile phone bill at Knight's flat, Archuleta said.

The charges involve the phone calls and 19 letters that describe harm to Zeta-Jones. One letter said, "We are going to slice her up like meat on a bone and feed her to the dogs."

Other letters suggested the actress would be chopped into pieces "like Sharon Tate was" during the 1969 Manson Family murders and referred to the deaths of President John F Kennedy and Nicole Brown Simpson.

Another letter included an apology and the explanation that the writer was in love with Douglas.

"I've never in my life had anything or had anyone say anything to me so satanic," Zeta-Jones testified in July at a hearing. "I can't even imagine how a sane human being could have these images locked in their brain."

Knight has pleaded not guilty and is in jail with bail set at £630,000. She was arrested June 3 at her Beverly Hills home.