BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) – A Minnesota man who sent threatening letters to an elementary school classmate in Connecticut was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison by a federal judge who said she was convinced he would have acted on that threat.

Anthony Perone, 21, pleaded guilty in March to sending the letters to the home of the woman’s grandparents in Bridgeport. Perone, who attended third and fourth grade with the victim, told police he found her address at the library.

“For 20 years you lived a rich life with everything. Money, family. Being popular. It’s now gonna end. Your gonna learn about suffering and having nothing. Pain you will feel. Fear, Being alive,” he wrote, signing the letter “Death Stalker.”

Authorities say Perone rarely left his room. The first time he ventured out alone to a store as an adult, he bought an assault rifle with a scope, prosecutors said.

Perone asked his mother last year to mail the letters. She thought they were for a friend in Connecticut and added his return address and name when she noticed it was missing.

Police say during a search of Perone’s apartment in Fairmont, Minn., last year, they recovered the assault rifle, a backpack filled with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a suitcase with a sharpened sword, knives, flashlights and binding wire and documents suggesting imminent travel to Connecticut. They say they also found hundreds of pages of disturbing writings and drawings with threats to kill his former classmate, her family and other classmates.

Perone also kept “to do” lists reminding himself to “break in at night” investigators say.

The first letter depicted a heart with a bite or chunk taken out and drips of blood marked “your blood.” It also contained a drawing of an assault weapon marked “the gun your pain” and a drawing of a tombstone with the victim’s name and a promise, “your hand and mine will meet.”

“That the defendant did as much planning as he did, persuades the court he did intend to act on his plan,” U.S. District Judge Janet Hall said just before imposing the maximum sentenced allowed. Hall also cited the lasting terror that the threats caused the victim and her family.

A second letter arrived in May 2006 depicting a series of clues from third- and fourth-grade classes. He recalled her favorite song, from the Lion King, “Can you feel are (sic) love tonight” and her favorite Christmas movie, “Jingle all the Way.”

The victim told the judge she fears for her life.

“He’s not coming with a letter next time,” she told the judge.

She said she could not recall her stalker or the experiences he described in grammar school. She became paranoid of strangers and friends, quitting her job and college, driving alternate routes home and avoiding using the computer to socialize for fear her stalker might find her.

Her grandmother had repeated nightmares of the images depicted in the letters. She changed the locks on her home and stopped gardening or socializing because she feared being outside.

The victims said she would check in with her family before she went anywhere.

“It’s like I’m 5-years-old again she told the judge.

Prosecutors urged a judge to impose the 10 year sentence, citing evidence that Perone was on a path to carry out the threats. Authorities also cited a psychological evaluation that found Perone has a personality disorder and remains a danger.

“In an era in which society has suffered from such tragic events as Columbine, the Amish school shootings, the Virginia Tech shootings and the recent Omaha mall shootings, it is imperative that deeply disturbed defendants like Mr. Perone do not fall through the cracks,” prosecutor Stephen Reynolds wrote in court papers.

Perone’s attorneys said a lengthy sentence was not the only way to protect the public. They say Perone could be involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment after he is released from prison.

AP-ES-12-20-07 1931EST