Chester County high-society extortion case ends with guilty plea

A threatened potboiler about a Chester County billionaire is permanently off the burner.

At a hearing Tuesday in federal court in Philadelphia, Agnes "Aggie" O'Brien, 55, pleaded guilty to three counts of extortion against Mary Alice Malone, a Campbell Soup heiress who resides on a 1,000-acre horse-breeding farm in the Coatesville area.

O'Brien worked for more than two decades as Malone's cook, horse trainer, concierge, confidante, and traveling companion before the relationship ended, said O'Brien's attorney, Michael M. Mustokoff.

In July 2009, O'Brien, who had rented a home from Malone near her estate, Iron Spring Farm, was shocked when she received an eviction notice, he said. Having made improvements to the home to facilitate a catering business she ran, O'Brien feared losing her livelihood and "panicked," Mustokoff said.

The result: O'Brien sent an e-mail to Malone titled "When the Soup Boils," detailing a work of fiction with unflattering, thinly veiled portraits of Malone, her friends, and relatives, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren M. Ouziel.

Under the terms of a proposed plea agreement, O'Brien would spend six years on probation for three felony convictions. If the judge accepts the deal, she also would be prohibited from communicating in any form about Malone or any of her relatives.

She had faced a maximum sentence of six years in prison.

Malone, 61, was listed as the 437th-richest person in the world by Forbes magazine in 2010, with an estimated worth of $2.2 billion. She is a granddaughter of John T. Dorrance, a chemical engineer who discovered a new method for canning soup that spawned the Campbell empire.

Asked by U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones 2d about her criminal history, O'Brien said she did not even have "unpaid parking tickets."

The judge expressed hesitation in accepting the guilty plea, creating new intrigue in a case that has already generated speculation about what O'Brien planned to divulge.

Jones said that O'Brien appeared to have been encouraged to commit the crimes by attorneys no longer involved in the case. He pointed to court records stating that an attorney for Malone had tried to negotiate a private settlement with O'Brien in January 2010 without contacting authorities, and that O'Brien's attorney had congratulated her with a "well done" e-mail when she was offered a check for $200,000.

"The court is rightfully outraged," Ouziel told the judge.