Hard to Kill

Apparently, it is once again safe to write about Steven Seagal and his former producer Julius Nasso's alleged extortion of money from him for the Mafia. Two journalists who've written about the case have reported receiving death threats, but the Los Angeles Times reports that, on Wednesday, Los Angeles police and FBI agents arrested an ex-con and charged him as the suspect who allegedly made the threats against one of the writers, Times reporter Anita Busch.

Authorities told the Times that Alexander Proctor, a 58-year-old Los Angeles resident, is the one who smashed Busch's windshield in June and left in her car a package that contained a dead fish and a rose, along with a note that read ''STOP.'' It wasn't a horse's head in the bed, but Busch got the message and has been in hiding ever since, though she has continued to write articles on other topics. Yesterday, Busch told Reuters, ''I am particularly thankful to the FBI and the LAPD for investigating this,'' but did not say whether she was coming out of hiding.

Proctor was denied bail on Wednesday because of prior drug and burglary convictions, and because U.S. attorneys consider him a flight risk, Reuters reports. His lawyer has not commented on the single charge -- interfering with commerce by threats of violence -- on which Proctor will enter a plea at his arraignment on Monday. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years behind bars.

It's not clear what connections, if any, Proctor has to any of the principals in the Seagal-Nasso case, or how the LAPD and the FBI tied him to the threat against Busch. Nor is it clear whether Proctor had anything to do with a similar threat against Vanity Fair writer Ned Zeman, who wrote about the case in a recent issue of the magazine, despite a warning in August to ''stop what you're doing'' from a driver who pulled up alongside Zeman in the driveway of his Los Angeles home and pointed a gun at him. However, the FBI told the Times it did not rule out the possibility of more arrests.

Nasso, who was indicted this summer as part of a sting operation against the Gambino crime family, has denied extorting money from Seagal, in turn accusing the actor of setting him up in order to avoid Nasso's breach-of-contract suit against him for allegedly backing out of an agreement to star in four more movies for the producer.

Last week, prosecutors accused Nasso and his brother Vincent of trying to intimidate a former Seagal aide into testifying against the actor, with the brothers allegedly hiring a private eye to tail the aide, serve him with a phony subpoena, and warn him, ''This could get ugly.'' The Nassos have denied those charges as well, saying that the aide was someone who wanted to testify against Seagal but declined to do so because of a confidentiality agreement he'd signed for the actor.