The Charlie Brown Assassination Plot
When the cops came for the former child actor who played Charlie Brown, he was hanging out with his dog Snoopy. Now, he faces more than four years in prison over a cop-killer conspiracy.
Photo illustration by The Daily Beast
Charlie Brown in real life sounds bloodlusty as hell.
On Tuesday, 59-year-old San Diego resident Peter Robbins—a former child actor who voiced Charlie Brown in some of your favorite Peanuts TV specials from the 1960s—pleaded guilty in superior court.
“I’m mentally ill,” Robbins told the judge. “I’ve committed no crime.”
The crime to which he did plead guilty, however? The voice of Charlie Brown apparently sent multiple letters from a jail cell, offering to pay several undisclosed recipients $50,000 in exchange for the assassination of San Diego County Sheriff William Gore.
“He has solicited and attempted to solicit many members through letters and writings to kill Sheriff Gore,” San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Brenda Daly said in court in September. “He has attempted to intimidate many, many people. He has acted out in jail numerous times.”
When the cops came for him this past September, Robbins was at his Oceanside residence hangout with his dog, aptly named Snoopy.
Now, Robbins faces over four years behind bars for the attempted cop-killer conspiracy, with sentencing scheduled for Dec. 7. (He had also been charged this year with threatening a judge and a manager of a trailer park.)
Robbins, who has been in jail since February for violating probation, has quite the rap sheet. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to making threats against his ex-girlfriend and stalking the doctor who performed his former lover’s boob job. (This was around the time that Robbins had been threatening to murder the plastic surgeon if she didn’t refund him for his ex’s breast enhancements, and when he was repeatedly menacing both his ex and her son.)
He was again arrested when it came to light that he was violating probation by discarding the court-ordered GPS bracelet, not completing his court-ordered domestic violence classes, and getting drunk.
“You just stick me in jail for 124 days—do you have a conscience?” he shouted and protested during a hearing in June. “Do you know I have not committed any crime? You revoke my probation, I revoke my criminal threat. I never threatened this woman in order for it to be a criminal threat. She has to believe I would kill her. I wouldn’t kill her. I have never had any violent behavior.”
Robbins then proceeded to hurl obscenities at the prosecutor right before telling the judge that “I hope you drop dead of a heart attack.”
When asked if Sheriff Gore had any comment on the case, his media relations director responded, “No, he does not. Thank you, though.”
Robbins’ latest round of legal woes appear to represent something of a relapse, after he ostensibly pledged, with tears running down his face, to get the help he desperately needed.
“I’ve taken responsibility for my actions and will openly seek treatment for my alcoholism and prescription medication addictions,” he told a courtroom during a sentencing in May 2013. “I realize this is just the first step toward becoming the fun-loving, respectful person I was and hope to become again.”
It was during this court appearance that the judge offered the troubled former Charlie Brown some much-needed advice that he seems to have yet to take: “If I can borrow a line from Peanuts, sir, I’m going to grant [you] probation,” the judge said. “If you adhere to those terms, you won’t go to prison. So, don’t be a blockhead.”