Staff photo / Ed Runyan Jamie Longnecker, left, of Berlin Center during his plea hearing Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. At right is his attorney, Max Hiltner.

YOUNGSTOWN — Jamie J. Longnecker, 47, of Berlin Center, pleaded no contest to two counts of menacing by stalking Monday for crimes dating back t 2017.

Authorities said he harassed 46 family members or friends of a young waitress at a Berlin Center restaurant where Longnecker once worked.

Judge Anthony D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court presided over the hearing and will sentence Longnecker at 2 p.m. July 26.

Ken Cardinal, assistant county prosecutor, told the judge Longnecker put together and mailed envelopes containing “very suggestive sexual references to a young girl, and he was (sending) them to her family members, extended family members, friends, associates and institutions where she was attending school.”

He was previously convicted of the same thing in 2012 in Mahoning County, and spent three years in prison that time, Cardinal said.

He “started it all over again” after serving his sentence in the 2012 case, Cardinal added.

As part of the investigation into the 53 counts of menacing by stalking charges he faced in this case, investigators with the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office used search warrants to recover all of the stamps, computers and other devices he used to create the envelopes he sent, Cardinal said.

Fifty-one of the counts were dismissed in exchange for Longnecker’s no contest pleas. The judge found Longnecker guilty of the two offenses. The two convictions include specifications indicating Longnecker forfeits all of the items seized.

Longnecker’s offenses were elevated to fourth-degree felonies because of the earlier convictions, Cardinal said. Longnecker could get about three years in prison for the offenses.

Cardinal said the initial “target” of Longnecker’s crimes was a young girl who worked as a waitress with at least three other girls in college while Longnecker was a dishwasher.

“Some how, some way, in his mind, he became attracted to this young girl, who did not know him, did not associate with him, didn’t wash dishes with him. She was strictly a waitress,” Cardinal said. Longnecker “got fired. He took that firing and made this young girl the target of his anger.”

Longnecker also went after the restaurant’s owner “and anybody else who had anything to do with Mr. Longnecker and this young girl’s family,” Cardinal said. “The state believes it has more than enough evidence to convict this man of all of these (53) counts, but in the interest of justice, judicial economy, et cetera, the offer was to plead to two counts.”

Cardinal said Mahoning County prosecutors will not ask the judge for a specific sentence “and allow the victims that appear in court to tell the court what it has meant to them to receive these items in the mail concerning someone they knew and loved.”

The hearing took longer than normal because a deaf interpreter participated in the hearing to help Longnecker understand what was being said and to interpret the sign language Longnecker uses.

erunyan@vindy.com