Man sentenced to 27 months in prison for harassing journalists

A New Hampshire man was sentenced to more than two years in prison for his role in the harassment and intimidation of New Hampshire Public Radio journalists whose homes were vandalized after the radio station published a story that was critical of a local businessperson.

Tucker Cockerline, 33, of Salem, New Hampshire, was sentenced on Aug. 27 in federal court in Boston to 27 months in prison and three years of supervised release, the U.S. attorney’s office for Massachusetts said Thursday.

Cockerline was part of a group of men who spray-painted vulgar and threatening language on the homes of a reporter, her parents and her editor, prosecutors said. The men also threw rocks and bricks through the windows of some of the homes.

Three other men – Eric Labarge, Michael Waselchuck and Keenan Saniatan – have been indicted in connection with the harassment.

Labarge and Waselchuck have pleaded guilty and are waiting to be sentenced. Saniatan is expected to plead guilty on Thursday, prosecutors said.

Cockerline pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiracy to commit stalking through interstate travel and using a facility of interstate commerce.

A lawyer for Waselchuck declined to comment Sunday. New Hampshire Public Radio and lawyers for the other three men did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.

The harassment began after New Hampshire Public Radio published a story in March 2022 that detailed allegations of sexual misconduct against Eric Spofford, who had owned the state’s largest network of drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers.

Spofford is not named in the federal criminal complaint or the news release from the U.S. attorney’s office, and he has said that he had nothing to do with the vandalism.

Spofford filed a defamation lawsuit against New Hampshire Public Radio but a judge dismissed the case in December 2023.

The judge, Daniel St. Hilaire of Rockingham County Superior Court, said in an order that he had reviewed nearly 3,000 documents that detailed the station’s reporting and said that they “contain absolutely no evidence of falsity,” The New Hampshire Business Review reported.

Spofford and his lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Lauren Chooljian, a senior reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio, reported and wrote the story about Spofford.

A month after it was published, a home where Chooljian used to live, her parents’ home and the home of her editor, Daniel Barrick, were vandalized.

Federal prosecutors said that Labarge, whom they described as “a close personal associate,” of Spofford, asked Cockerline to vandalize Chooljian’s former home in Hanover, New Hampshire.

In April 2022, Cockerline spray-painted in large, red letters a vulgar word on the front door of the home and threw a brick through an exterior window. Two other homes were vandalized in a similar way that night.

On the night of May 20, 2022, Cockerline spray-painted a vulgar word on the front of the home of Chooljian’s parents in Hampstead, New Hampshire, and left a brick on the ground by their front door, prosecutors said.

Hours later, Waselchuck threw a brick through the window of Chooljian’s home in Melrose, Massachusetts, and spray-painted the phrase “Just The Beginning” in large, red letters on the front of the house.

New Hampshire Public Radio earned a national Edward R. Murrow Award for Chooljian’s investigation. The station later released a podcast called “The 13th Step” about the reporting and the harassment that followed. The podcast was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.