Former Philly Bar Owner Michael Naessens Cleared of Charges of Threatening Judges and Others

Left: Former Philadelphia bar owner Michael Naessens. Right: Eulogy Belgian Tavern, the popular bar that Naessens owned in Old City for more than 15 years. (Photo via Google Maps)

Editor’s note: This article has been updated.

At one time, Michael Naessens was known as one of Philadelphia’s go-to guys for better beers, having presided over Old City’s Eulogy Belgian Tavern for more than 15 years. But for more than two years ending last September, Naessens found himself wrongly accused of making threats against two Philly judges, among others.

In January 2019, Naessens, then 54, was picked up by police in Las Vegas, where he has lived off and on over the years, on an arrest warrant originating here.

According to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, he was charged with 14 counts, including threatening judicial officials, criminal use of a communication facility, and making terroristic threats. He was placed in police custody in lieu of $350,000 bail.

The charges related to threatening letters sent to two Common Pleas Court judges as well as ten other individuals. Prosecutors alleged Naessens wrote the letters in such a way as to blame someone else for the crime.

But there’s a twist. The District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges last September 9th, and Naessens’ lawyer says Naessens himself is the one who was framed.

“The Commonwealth determined we could not meet our burden at trial due to evidence that was obtained throughout the course of that investigation,” Jane Roh, spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

That evidence? A trail of digital footprints, gathered by Naessens’ lawyer over more than a year, establishing that the threatening letters were not written on Naessens’ computer and were mailed from Michigan at a time when Naessens was in Las Vegas, according to the Inquirer.

“Everybody involved deserved a better investigation, I include the DA’s Office in that,” Naessens’ lawyer, Brad V. Shuttleworth, told the Inquirer. “I don’t know if it was sloppy [police] work or rushing or what it was. But they were completely off the mark.”

The lawyer said he believes Naessens was framed by an acquaintance who wrongly identified Naessens as the man in a surveillance photo from the Michigan FedEx store from which the threats were allegedly sent. According to the Inquirer, the case remains open.

“A lot of people feel that we are being tracked too much. However, in this case, the fact that some of the things that we do on a daily basis can lead to your whereabouts, that basically saved Mr. Naessens,” Shuttleworth told the outlet. “Without that digital data, how else would we have been able to prove this alibi evidence so strongly?”

Naessens shuttered Eulogy Belgian Tavern in 2017. Originally, he said that he was closing for renovations, but a week later, he announced that it would remain closed.

“I don’t feel safe operating in Philly anymore,” Naessens told Foobooz at the time, going on to cite Philly’s “drug and crime spree” as among the reasons that he was closing up shop.

He now works as a certified public accountant in Las Vegas, according to his lawyer.