For four months, Kathryn Cohen Allen tormented and threatened her neighbors, railing against interracial dating and against what she believed was a seedy affair.

During the summer of 2011, she took it a step further: concocting an anthrax threat against Florida's two U.S. senators.

Allen filled the envelopes with powder and notes. She filled out the U.S. senators' addresses, then she signed the envelopes with the names and addresses of a black neighbor and a white woman she knew.

Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio received Allen's death threats and cornstarch - used to simulate a deadly anthrax threat - four months after she started her gossip campaign, targeting a black man and a white woman in her home county of Hamilton. She was arrested about a year later.

Allen pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court to sending the letters.

Court documents detailed exactly how she tormented the man and woman:

It started one day in February 2011 in Jasper, a small town north of Live Oak near the Georgia border. That day, the man found a note glued to his truck. The note accused him of sleeping with a married white woman. The note included a threat against him and against his son.

The man and woman were not named in federal court documents.

More letters soon followed. Group text messages went to people around Jasper, claiming the man was sleeping with the woman.

Businesses in Jasper began receiving similar letters, saying who was visiting the man at his home and at what times. The letters described the kind of car the woman drove, what clothes she wore.

The information was accurate. The man was being watched.

The moment he walked into his house, his phone started ringing, but when he answered the caller would hang up. Once he stepped outside, the phone stopped ringing.

Next came invitations to a baby shower for the man and the woman's child, except that there was no child.

The woman's children were sent letters at school. Your mom shouldn't be dating black men, they read.

The state Department of Children and Family Services received a doll and a letter that claimed the man was a child molester.

The woman and her husband received a letter offering them condolences upon the deaths of their children. The children hadn't died.

On Facebook, "Amber Smith," a young busty white woman who had recently graduated from high school and didn't seem to like to wear much beyond a bra, published the black man's address and told people to come at specific times on specific days to watch the affair.

Meanwhile, Allen found herself in luck. She and her husband had won some money from a scratch-off lottery ticket. With the money, they bought a computer and a television. She let the FBI check her computer. The FBI imaging revealed that Allen was behind the Amber Smith account.

Allen, who lived with her husband across the street from the black man, had sent threatening letters filled with cornstarch powder to the tax collector's office, the health department, the jail, the Department of Children and Family Services. She also sent letters to the man and to three other people who weren't identified in the federal documents.

She admitted all of that as part of her plea deal. She still awaits sentencing, and she could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000. Whether the man and the woman had an affair was not noted in the federal case.

Andrew Pantazi: (904) 359-4310