Dianne Jolley, the former dean of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), sent a total of 19 threatening letters to herself and several colleagues, a jury found. In them, Jolley included everything from her underwear to notes apologizing for "your loss," as well as other cryptic statements and items.
In one of the letters, Jolley put a photograph of herself with a giant red line slashed through it, which the Crown says was part of a scam seeking "emotional and physical support" for closing down the school's TCM department, which was deemed to be the least financially viable in the science faculty.
Jolley has pleaded not guilty to 20 charges, including three for sending letters with the intention of inducing a false belief that the department would endanger her own safety and that of her fellow staff.
Bizarrely, Jolly claimed in several of the notes that they had been dipped in a "nasty" vibrio bacteria grown in the school's labs. For this, she faces 16 counts of conveying information likely to make another person fear for his or her own safety, as well as knowingly spreading false or misleading information.
Jolley also faces an additional charge for causing financial disadvantage by deceiving UTS into spending more than $127,000 in security measures to protect her. It is now known that security teams were essentially paid to protect Jolley from herself.
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Part of these expenses included installing closed-caption security cameras throughout her home and office, along with monitoring alarms, private security chaperones while on campus, and even drivers to take her to and from work.
Jolley had attempted to shut down the TCM program back in May 2019, initially recommending that students finish out their courses. However, she failed to gain support from the board.
This apparently prompted her to go haywire as she conjured up fake letters and stories about being threatened. At one point, Jolley falsely told police that she had been abused on her way home from work by "someone in the Asian community."
Forensic experts were able to match Jolley's fingerprints to some of the letters, as well as trace her back to some of the phone calls that she made to others pretending to be someone else.
"Two letters were sent by me ... I should have seen a psychologist," Jolley is recorded as having stated after her first arrest back in November 2019. "Now they are accusing me of everything, vandalism, all these sorts of things."
Before her arrest, Jolley picked up a letter from the post office that stated, "I watch you, I see what you do, you're not safe and you know it." In another instance, she found a piece of her clothing chopped up in the backyard along with a letter on her car that read, "I know where you live."
It appears as though Jolley was behind all of these threats to herself, and her legal team is presumably now claiming that she has mental health problems.
"What took place after her first arrest ... she continued to send letters to herself and staff at UTS to put forward the proposition that she was not a suspect," indicated crown prosecutor Roger Kimball, noting a continued pattern of mentally ill behavior from Jolley. "And to persist with some sort of mental health defense."
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