Residents receive Planned Parenthood mail defaced with threatening messages

APPLE VALLEY, Minn. (KMSP) - The U.S. Postal Service is now investigating several Planned Parenthood mailers that were defaced with threatening messages in the southeast metro.

Several postal service customers received envelopes with the words “death” and “die” written on them.

“I think what’s really disconcerting is I can’t quite tell where it originated from,” said Nika Davies, an Apple Valley resident.

Davies told Fox 9 she was sorting her mail on Thursday when something on an oversized envelope from Planned Parenthood jumped out at her.

It was the word “death” in blue ink scrawled on the return address.

“I didn’t feel threatened until later and then thought, 'I don’t like getting anything that says ‘death’ on it,'" said Davies.

Fox 9 tracked down three similar, defaced Planned Parenthood mailers delivered to postal service customers in Apple Valley and Eagan this week.

“That definitely feels like a targeted attack on people who receive it,” said State Representative Erin Maye Quade (DFL - Apple Valley).

The parents of the first term state representative received one that said “die.”

“We know there is heavy rhetoric surrounding the issue of pro-choice, anti-choice, so having ‘die’ on your mail is not only a crime, but it is very scary,” said Quade.

The U.S. Postal Service confirmed its inspection service is looking into the issue. At this point, it’s too early for them to say whether or not the apparently hateful threats are the work of a USPS employee. A USPS spokesman told Fox 9, investigators will try to isolate the mail stream to figure out where the envelope defacing might have occurred.

“If there’s somebody at the Post Office doing it, they should be fired. Flat out,” said Davies. “They should not be tampering with the mail. It doesn’t matter if it’s on Planned Parenthood or what they wrote. The mail is not to be tampered with. It’s that simple.”

The USPS released the following statement:

"The Postal Service is aware of the situation and the U.S. Inspection Service and Office of Inspector General are engaged and investigating. At this time, it is not clear when, where, or by whom the mail pieces were defaced, but efforts are underway to ascertain the information."