An unemployed truck driver who repeatedly professed her desire to marry retired opera star Beverly Sills has been jailed on charges of stalking and harassing the famed soprano, officials said on Thursday.
Victoria Glover, 39, of Detroit, was arrested by police on Tuesday when she showed up at the stage door of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center demanding to see Sills.
Glover is charged with one count each of stalking and harassment and a third count of aggravated harassment stemming from a series of telephone calls, letters and visits she is accused of making to Sills since November 18, 2003.
She faces up to a year in jail if convicted.
Glover was denied bail and was being held at the woman’s facility at the Riker’s Island jail after Assistant District Attorney Chris Davis told Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Kathryn Freed that the defendant was a flight risk and “highly unlikely to reappear” for future proceedings.
Glover also was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before her next court date on June 9.
According to a criminal complaint, Sills says that as a result of Glover’s efforts to contact her “she has experienced fear for her physical safety.”
The complaint further alleges that Glover, using the name Jesus Emmanuel, called Sills at the Metropolitan Opera at least twice a week from November 2003 to May 17 of this year, saying: “I am coming to New York to marry Beverly Sills. I would like to speak to Beverly.”
In a letter to Sills cited in the complaint, Glover writes: “I love you. Please marry me, Beverly, so I don’t go mad. I can’t live without a woman. I want no one but you. Don’t worry, God said we can be married.”
When arrested, Glover told police she was “Jesus Emmanuel” and that she “went to see Beverly Sills ... to marry her.”
The defendant’s 86-year-old grandmother, Marie Glover, also of Detroit, told Reuters she “raised Victoria” adding that her granddaughter “didn’t go there to harm the lady. She was taking her a little gift ... she likes opera ... and has her operas.”
The grandmother said Glover arrived in New York on Monday by bus. Asked why her granddaughter used the name Jesus Emmanuel, Marie Glover replied, “God was talking to her.”
Sills, 74, chairs the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera. “She will have no comment,” a spokesman for the Met said.