By Stuart Washington
PAUL PETERS'S collar-bomb delusions have stretched to include one of Australia's least-known media billionaires: a woman living quietly near the upper Hunter town of Scone.
Peters told police he had $12 million in property tied up in a dispute with a trust; police also found a draft letter of demand addressed to the ''Trustee of the James M.Cox Estate Trust''.
Tangled web ... schoolgirl Madeleine Pulver with her parents.Credit: Paul Bibby
In naming the founder of one of the US's wealthiest private media companies, Cox Enterprises, Peters was apparently considering a wealthy target with strong links to Australia.
The media empire's Australian ties include the Scone resident Blair Parry-Okeden, a granddaughter of James M. Cox, who inherited a fortune worth $US6.3 billion in 2007.
Ms Parry-Okeden, described by Forbes magazine as living ''in near anonymity'', is Australia's second-wealthiest woman after Gina Rinehart.
The trust was named in a deleted letter of demand recovered from a USB drive that Peters left attached to the supposedly explosive device he placed around the neck of then schoolgirl Madeleine Pulver.
On Thursday, Peters pleaded guilty to a charge relating to the attack in the Pulvers' Mosman home last August.
The geographical proximity of Peters, 52, and Ms Parry-Okeden, 61, gives rise to questions about whether Peters was basing a grudge on personal dealings. A grudge against media interests also reinforces questions about whether Rupert Murdoch's long-time lieutenant and a neighbour of the Pulvers, Ken Cowley, was Peters's real target for the hoax.
James M. Cox was a two-time governor of Ohio who founded Cox Enterprises, one of the US's largest newspaper companies, which expanded into cable television, internet and radio.
Mr Cox's two daughters, Anne Cox Chambers and Barbara Cox Anthony, inherited his wealth.
Mrs Anthony, who died in 2007, had long held property interests in Australia. She bought the Winderadeen property at Collector in the southern tablelands in the early 1970s.
The family's ties to Australia were strengthened in 1977 when Mrs Anthony's daughter, then 27 and known as Blair Kennedy, married Simon Parry-Okedon, from Scone. The pair reportedly met while Mr Parry-Okeden was on holiday in Honolulu. The couple have two children, Andrew, 32, and Henry, 30, and later divorced.
At the time of their marriage in Hawaii, Peters was entering his last year at Scots College.
Peters is due to reappear in the District Court on March 15.