SCIENTIST DENIES DEATH THREAT CHARGE.(CAPITAL REGION)

Byline: MELISSA GRACE Staff writer

Albany A former RPI doctoral candidate and biomedicine instructor pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges that he sent death threats to an Albany money investor.

At a detention hearing in federal court, Peter V. Calabria gave a nearly 20-minute speech begging to be released on home detention while his charges are pending. The 56-year-old scientist, his voice sometimes cracking, said he was not a threat to the community and that it was his instinct to write that got him into trouble.

``I had no intention of doing anything to Wendell,'' Calabria said of Wendell Williams, an Albany coin dealer he claims lost …