Miss New Jersey received a second blackmail package yesterday, even as state investigators probed the other contestants in the pageant.
The new mailing contained “a letter and possibly new photographs,” said reigning queen Amy Polumbo’s lawyer, Anthony Caruso.
“Neither the contents of the package nor the recipients of the package shall be disclosed or discussed until state investigators are able to review and analyze,” said Caruso.
Meanwhile, the beauty-pageant runner-up in the eye of the storm of the blackmail scandal denied any wrongdoing yesterday and said she worried that it would tarnish future competitions.
“I wish only the best for Amy and her family at this time. I hope this situation doesn’t overshadow all of the good that these organizations do for society,” said Ronica Licciardello, who came in second to Polumbo last month.
Licciardello shot down questions of whether she had anything to do with the alleged shakedown attempt.
“No, I did not,” she said on the front lawn of her Mount Laurel, N.J., home.
Investigators with the state attorney general have opened a probe into the shady scheme to use embarrassing photos to force Polumbo to relinquish her crown and are eyeing the five top runners-up, sources said.
Several sources close to the competition said Licciardello and other competitors who have long toiled in the pageant circuit were particularly dismayed when Polumbo, who many viewed as an inexperienced upstart, won the competition.
Licciardello’s neighbors described her as a die-hard competitor who was known around town as “Queenie.”
“She was in a lot of pageants when she was little and a teenager. I remember one time she won a pageant and she marched up and down the street in her tiara and her sash and an evening gown and high heels,” said one neighbor who declined to give his name.
But he said he couldn’t imagine she would try and blackmail her competitor to step aside.
The sinister scheme came to light when Polumbo announced that someone had gotten hold of compromising photos of her from her Facebook page in which she drank underage and made out with her boyfriend.