What happened to Shannon Richardson, the 'The Walking Dead' actress who sent letters containing ricin to Obama

In The Walking Dead he played a zombie, without dialogue and as an extra. Shannon Richardson (Shannon Guess in some credits) had also gotten small jobs in other television productions, such as The Vampire Diaries, but her name became known in June 2013, when she was arrested for sending letters containing ricin to Barack Obama and two other people.

She lived in New Boston, Texas, and had been married for less than two years to Nathaniel Richardson, an Army veteran who worked as a mechanic at a military installation. She had five children from previous relationships and was pregnant with her first.

On May 20, 2013, he had sent three letters containing ricin, a potentially deadly toxin. One was directed at Obama; another, to Michael Bloomberg, then mayor of New York; and the third, to Mark Glaze, director of the organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The texts threatened violence to those who tried to limit access to weapons and were written as if the sender were a man.

Ten days later, Richardson went to the police in Shreveport, Louisiana, and reported her husband as responsible for the shipments.

He said that he had found suspicious materials and a note with the addresses of Obama and Bloomberg at home. Investigators found, however, that her husband was at work when some of the searches related to the letters were performed on the family computer. Her story then changed, and she finally acknowledged that she had printed the labels and sent the envelopes, although she still maintained that he had forced her. Nathaniel was not charged; She was arrested on June 7.

Her husband immediately filed for divorce, and in July Shannon gave birth while in custody.

In December he pleaded guilty to possessing a toxin for use as a weapon. The sentence came on July 16, 2014: eighteen years in prison, the maximum provided in his agreement with the prosecution, and more than $367,000 in reparations. During the hearing he assured that he had "never wanted to harm anyone" and maintained that he "hoped that the security controls would prevent the letters from reaching their recipients."

In September 2025, Richardson requested to reduce the sentence to just over twelve years, taking advantage of a change in federal sentencing guidelines for certain first-time convicts. They rejected the request on September 18: deliberately sending letters with a toxin constituted a violent act and excluded her from that reduction.