NORTHAMPTON — A man charged with making violent threats against a former girlfriend as he traveled cross-country from his Arizona home toward Northampton will remain incarcerated without the right to bail following a dangerousness hearing Monday in Hampshire Superior Court.

Finding that no condition of release could ensure the safety of the alleged victim or her children, Judge Edward McDonough ordered Anthony Hayden Jr., 44, of Gilbert, Arizona, to be jailed pending trial.

Arguing in court for Hayden’s continued detention, Assistant District Attorney Erin Aiello provided a detailed account of the various threats he had sent the woman or posted on social media between March 2022 and September 2023.

Defense attorney Thomas Glynn asked McDonough to order his client released to a drug treatment center. Additionally, he proposed GPS monitoring and a prohibition on all electronic devices and communications.

Hayden has pleaded not guilty to more than two dozen charges, eight of them felonies, including stalking, violation of a restraining order, threat to commit a crime, harassing communications, witness intimidation, and breaking and entering in the daytime.

He was arrested in Kansas in September on an extraditable warrant after Northampton police learned that he had posted public messages on his Instagram account saying he was on his way to find and kill his former girlfriend.

Hayden first came to police notice when he allegedly entered the woman’s Northampton residence uninvited during the daytime on March 15, 2022. She was not home at the time, but a contractor who was working there told him to leave.

The woman reported to police that Hayden had been demanding money from her and sending her threatening text messages. She obtained a restraining order barring him from contacting her in any way.

In March 2023, before that order expired, Hayden allegedly sent her a series of threatening messages via Facebook, text, email and Instagram over the course of a week. The woman did not renew the restraining order, telling police in April that she had not had contact from him since March 31.

Aiello said Hayden began posting public videos in September with graphic descriptions of what he would do to the woman and her child. He also called her at work repeatedly.

After his arrest, he was interviewed by police in Butler County, east of Wichita, Kansas. After being brought to Northampton, he was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for evaluation, where he was found to be competent to stand trial. He was indicted Jan. 11 on the charges by a Hampshire County grand jury.

Aiello told the court Hayden’s pattern of behavior was concerning and that detention would be the only option that could secure the safety of the victim and the public.

Originally from New York, Hayden has no ties to the local community, she said. She cited concerns about his mental health and substance use, as well as his continued violations of court orders.

Before hearing from Glynn, McDonough noted that his primary focus in reaching his decision would be on self-control, and in his findings he wrote that “defendant displays a total lack of self-control.” He noted he found the commonwealth’s affidavit in support of detention “credible in all respects,” writing that Hayden had made threats of violence, rape and child rape “too numerous to list” and had displayed a “deranged outburst” during the hearing.

Glynn acknowledged that the messages Hayden sent were troubling, but he argued that he had committed no acts of violence.

He said some of the grand jury exhibits and the Butler County interview suggest that Hayden and the woman had a rough way of interacting and that there was evidence she would retort in a similar fashion.

He said his client would like to “move on.”

“He would like this behavior not to be part of his life anymore,” Glynn said.