I actually had never heard of that one - I was thinking it's going to be a replay of the Paul Kelly Tripplehorn DC email fiasco of several years ago. He got run out of DC and expelled from Amherst. The poor guy ended up committing suicide a year or so back, something like ten years after the incident.
Ms. Becton has made a bad, bad mistake. Correcting someone for using the wrong (or any) variant of your name is completely understandable and no problem at all. Beating the poor guy into the ground with a chain of psycho emails is going to end any career she thought of having in DC. It's part of HR's due-diligence to Google potential employees and this will never go away. Hitting the Send button on an email is like hitting Launch on a nuclear missile.
This may have a bearing on the letter and -- if it is true he committed suicide, which was not clear from what I have read -- his untimely demise.
I prefer the Claire Swire letter, because nobody suffered anything but well-deserved embarrassment.
Cheers!