Robert J. Joe Halderman, a CBS News employee pleaded not guilty Friday, Oct. 2, to trying to blackmail Letterman for $2 million in a plot that spurred the TV host to acknowledge sexual relationships with women who worked on his show.
Halderman, a producer for the true-crime show "48 Hours," entered the plea in a Manhattan court as he was arraigned on one count of attempted first-degree grand larceny, punishable by five to 15 years upon conviction.
Bail was set at $200,000.
A story in the Dayton Daily News that appeared in 1994 noted that CBS producer "Joe" Halderman had a role in a late-night Winter Olympic Games broadcast on CBS when Randy Newman sang, ³Dayton, Ohio - 1903."
"The song Newman wrote and recorded for his 1972 album, Sail Away, was accompanied by a montage of winter scenes from the town of Hamar, where the speedskating and figure skating events are being held," the story said.
Halderman was born in Dayton in 1957. He produced the segment linking Dayton and Hamar.
Halderman¹s family moved from Dayton to Columbus before he started school, he told the newspaper.
"My mother was a singer and entertainer and a television personality in the '50s and '60s," he said. "She had a show called Jeannie Kaye¹s Kindergarden on WBNS-TV in Columbus in the '60s."
Later, the family moved to Arizona, where Halderman grew up. He became a CBS News producer based in London.
On Friday, Assistant District Attorney Judy Salwen told the judge Halderman was in debt, but did not elaborate.
The prosecutor said Halderman gave the talk show host a package of materials that "contained clear, explicit and actual threats that indicate this defendant (wanted to) destroy the reputation of Mr. Letterman and to submit him and his family to humiliation and ridicule."
Halderman, hands cuffed behind his back, stared at the floor during most of the hearing and said only, "not guilty."