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Larry Mendte's obsessive spying on Alycia Lane's e-mails seems to be both.
The CBS 3 anchor turns out to be a treacherous betrayer, preoccupied with destroying Lane, according to a federal investigation.
The U.S. attorney charged him Monday with secretly accessing Lane's e-mails 537 times over five months, logging in again and again, hour after hour, morning and night, over a five-month period.
It's absolutely chilling.
At work, at home, on vacation, at the Union League, for God's sake, up to 15 times in a day, Mendte poached Lane's private correspondence for details to use against her.
And he found them - allegedly leaking embarrassing information to the press that cemented Lane's doom. She was fired from the TV station in January.
The only consolation for Lane - and it isn't much, considering what she's lost - is that he destroyed himself in the process.
Federal prosecutors charged Mendte on Monday with one count of accessing e-mail without authorization. He's expected to plead guilty.
The charge, a felony, sounds like a technical legal violation, a bloodless misuse of electronics.
It's anything but.
Mendte was a cyber Peeping Tom, electronically stalking Lane almost every day.
It seems deviant, voyeuristic - far more disturbing than the actual charge suggests.
Bad enough that he violated the sacrosanct confidentiality of her communications with her lawyer.
He also allegedly viewed photographs that a bikini-clad Lane e-mailed a friend and spied on her personal conversations with her friends and family.
It's creepy to imagine an ill-intentioned colleague savoring personal details innocently divulged in a private conservation.
Did Mendte get satisfaction from reading about the anguish he'd wrought? Is he sadistic, too?
Just what drove him?
Certainly not competitiveness. Being competitive means reveling in rivalry and lusting to win. It implies fairness.
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