FARGO - A man who cut phone cables in this city a decade ago to disable an electronics store's alarm system so he could rob it is set to get out of prison this week.

Michael Damron, 41, also sent a letter to a Bismarck district judge last year, promising one "evil act" a month against the public.

At 8 a.m. Saturday, after more than eight years in custody, Damron will be free again.

Law enforcement officials said they're taking precautions in anticipation of the release, but nothing more than what they occasionally do for other inmates.

Last week Fargo police officials sent an e-mail to their employees with Damron's picture, details of his prison release and background on his crimes and threats.

"Anytime you have somebody convicted on something that serious and they are released, you have concern," Lt. Tod Dahle said Friday. "It had as much impact on the community as any crime I recall."

Sheriff's departments in the North Dakota counties of Burleigh and Cass are circulating Damron's photo, and Burleigh County Sheriff Steve Berg planned to speak with Judge Gail Hagerty, to whom Damron addressed the 2004 letter.

"We don't foresee that there's going to be a problem, but it's always better that we're prepared," Berg said.

A Burleigh County jury found Damron not guilty last June of threatening a public official with the letter, which Damron sent after Hagerty dismissed his lawsuit against another inmate.

While at the North Dakota State Penitentiary, Damron frequently threatened other inmates, Warden Tim Schuetzle said.

"He's threatened me a number of times," Schuetzle added. "He's really angry - a very angry person."

As a 31-year-old electrical engineering student at North Dakota State University, Damron sawed through 19 thick underground phone cables the night of Jan. 21, 1995, in Fargo-Moorhead.

Damron planned and successfully disabled alarms so he could raid a Fargo electronics store where $80,000 in equipment was stolen the same day as the telephone vandalism.

Authorities in Fargo and Sioux Falls, S.D., later recovered the merchandise, most of it from Damron's apartment and some from a storage unit he rented in Sioux Falls.

The act caused $1 million in damage and left about 20,000 people without phone service.

A nationwide manhunt for Damron lasted 21 months.

Once he's out, he must still complete two years of supervised release for being a felon in possession of a firearm, a federal charge for which he must first report to Fargo within 72 hours of his release. After that, he may be allowed to settle elsewhere.

Cathy Jensen, inmate records supervisor for the prison, said records show Damron plans to move to Eagan, Minn., to live with his mother.

But Schuetzle said Damron sometimes says otherwise.

"He keeps telling us he's going to stay in Bismarck and make our lives miserable," Schuetzle said.

Damron had been on the run before. In 1987, on his 24th birthday, he escaped from a minimum-security facility near Duluth, Minn. Two years later, he was shot twice during an attempted burglary of a lounge in Mississippi. Before moving to Fargo, he served prison time in Minnesota for felony theft in Le Sueur and Nicollet counties.

The manhunt in the Fargo case ended Nov. 1, 1996, when the FBI arrested Damron in an Iowa motel. Back in Cass County, he pleaded guilty to cutting the phone lines and possessing stolen goods. Judge Lawrence Leclerc sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

While incarcerated, Damron was cited for at least 20 rule violations, a number that Schuetzle called above average but not extremely high. Many of the infractions were minor, such as the times he grabbed for more than the two cookies allowed at lunch, didn't clean his cell or gave his magazine to another inmate.

The more serious matters included his threats, Schuetzle said.

"He's threatened a lot of people," Schuetzle said.

Along with his prison sentence, Damron was ordered by Leclerc to pay $250,000 in restitution to US West. That amount was converted to a civil judgment, meaning Damron doesn't have to make payments unless Qwest seeks the money in civil court.

Scott Macintosh, state president for Qwest, said he doesn't know if his company plans to seek restitution.