The Holly Willoughby Abduction Case E-Book

Katherine Smith

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 235

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

In the summer of 2024, following a high profile trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, a man named Gavin Plumb was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his obsessive online messaging in private chat groups of a harrowing plan he had formulated to abduct the famous television presenter Holly Willoughby.Who exactly was Gavin Plumb and how realistic was his abduction plan? Was he a potential killer and genuine threat or merely a sad bedroom fantasist who had become lost down the grim rabbit hole of vile misogynistic chat groups?

Leseprobe

TheHolly WilloughbyAbduction Case

Katherine Smith© Copyright 2024 Katherine Smith

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ContentsAuthor's NoteChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenReferencesPhoto CreditAUTHOR'S NOTEThe case of Gavin Plumb is somewhat unusual in that no physical crime took place. Plumb was convicted for what he was planning and talking about online rather than something he got around to actually doing. These sorts of cases are increasingly common today as justice systems and police forces adapt (as best they can) to the challenges and dangers posed by the internet. Once upon a time sex offenders would be isolated and adrift in society but these days they have their own online chat groups where they can hang out to share tales of their grubby deeds and perhaps even plot new crimes together. Efforts by law enforcement agencies to monitor these sorts of places and identify dangerous people are complex and difficult to say the least due to the vast size of the net. Many of the tech companies who facilitate these groups haven't always been a huge help either. Gavin Plumb never met Holly Willoughby and never went anywhere near her house or the television studios where she worked for most of the week co-hosting This Morning. He never 'stalked' Holly Willoughby nor made any attempt to go to a place where he knew she would be. He did though spend the best part of two years in private chat groups talking (in graphic terms) about abducting her and the things he would do if she were his prisoner. He solicited (without any real sign of success) help in his attempt to put a kidnapping 'crew' together and purchased items (restraints, metal cable ties etc) that would potentially assist in an abduction. The defence argued in court that Plumb's abduction plan was absurd and simply an online fantasy that he got carried away with due to the lonely emptiness of his life in the real world. Gavin Plumb and his defence team insisted that this was just a sick, horrible, and regrettable online fantasy that he never had any intention of doing for real and wouldn't have been capable of doing anyway. Gavin Plumb was a hugely overweight and patently unfit man who couldn't even drive. How was he supposed to kidnap Holly Willoughby? The prosecution took a very different view on this strange and depressing case. They pointed out the dark criminal history of Gavin Plumb and the things he had done not in cyberspace but the real world. Plumb had two past criminal convictions for attempting to abduct and restrain four different women. This information certainly put a more complex (and damaging) gloss on the defence that his Holly Willoughby abduction talk was just that - merely talk. The more one learned about Gavin Plumb the more difficult it became to believe he was someone content to confine himself merely to vile online chat groups. In the book that follows we will examine this bizarre and disturbing case in detail and try our best to make some sense of it if we can. Be warned that parts of this book unavoidably make for grim reading but there is no way to present a full picture of this case without all the details - however grim and unpleasant they might be. I sincerely hope too though that this book is respectful and sensitive in relation to Holly Willoughby and all the victims of Gavin Plumb - none of whom deserve to be connected to this awful man in any way. A list of selected references used in the research for this book can be found at the conclusion of the final chapter. CHAPTER ONEThe Collector (which was a major influence on Stephen King's Misery) is a 1963 psychological novel by John Fowles. In the story (which is told from two perspectives), a man named Frederick Clegg collects butterflies and is completely detached from society and socially awkward and shy. Clegg, who inherited money from his parents and therefore doesn't need to go to work, purchases a remote cottage but when he ventures into town he becomes obsessed with a local art student named Miranda Grey. After secretly observing and spying on Miranda for a time, Clegg kidnaps her with the aid of chloroform and imprisons her in the cellar of his cottage - which he has carefully prepared for the latest addition to his 'collection'. Clegg promises not to harm or abuse Miranda and believes that if he can keep her there and shower her with gifts she will come to love him and agree to stay for good. A battle of wills between these two very different people now unfolds. Clegg is a monster but a calm, delusional one who thinks that if he gives Miranda everything she requests in the form of books and art materials she will somehow come around and be happy to stay. He's always offended by the notion that he is a monster and constantly tries to reassure himself that he isn't doing anything strange or wrong. Frederick naively thinks he can create his own personal fantasy world with himself and Miranda together forever in the cottage. He learns though that in the real world you can't have everything you want or desire. Only in private fantasies and daydreams do you control the outcomes in life.In the grim fantasy world of Gavin Plumb, his own version of Miranda Grey was the famous television presenter Holly Willoughby. Gavin Plumb was obsessed with a great many female celebrities (as his internet files testified) but Holly Willoughby was up there on a golden pedestal way beyond and above any of the others. He would refer to her simply as 'Holly' online as if she was the only person with that name in the entire world. Of course, most of the people he mixed with online knew exactly who he meant because the vast majority of his online activities, which once featured more healthy pursuits like football news and gaming, became ever more constrictive until they consisted almost entirely of private chat groups made up of men (many of whom were convicted sex offenders like Plumb) talking about all the horrible things they'd like to do to Holly Willoughby and other female presenters and celebrities. These were bleak cyber dens of misogyny and violent sexual fantasies. Gavin Plumb was addicted to these awful online groups in the end. He would literally spend day and night there frantically messaging other members and posting endless pictures of Holly Willoughby. The ultimate fantasy of Gavin Plumb was to abduct Holly Willoughby and keep her captive as his own personal property to do with as he pleased. Plumb spent the best part of two years talking about this fantasy online. The basic fantasy was that he would abduct Holly Willoughby from her home and then keep her captive in an abandoned stable where she would be raped and abused. Plumb's fantasy stipulated that it would be impossible to return her without getting caught so at some point he would have to kill her. In the end the fantasy got so elaborate and explicit it didn't sound like a fantasy at all. While the plan itself never made an awful lot of sense (Gavin Plumb was not famed for his high IQ), tedious logistics and mundane small details were interspliced with sexual fantasy. This made it feel suspiciously like an actual plan rather than mere fantasy - a fact which was not lost on the prosecution when this strange and depressing affair ended up in court. Gavin Plumb even seemed to start trying to recruit people online to help him abduct Holly Willoughby. He appeared to believe that the chat group he frequented was rife with professional criminals to whom abducting a celebrity would be no big deal at all. However, unlike Frederick Clegg with Miranda Grey, Plumb never got as far as acting on his alleged kidnap plan. The plan never went beyond the confines of Plumb's computer and daydreams. In fact, Plumb insisted there was never a plan to begin with - at least not a real one. It was all make believe. It existed only in his head and in 'dark web' style private chatrooms, forums, and messages. Plumb insisted that all his talk of abducting Holly Willoughby was nothing more than sordid fan fiction. This was the defence that Gavin Plumb and his barrister would doggedly cling to right to the end when, much to his shock, he ended up in court for all the terrible things he had said and threatened to do on the internet. Gavin Plumb desperately hoped the very idea of him - a portly out of shape man to say the least - undertaking some SAS style raid on Holly Willoughby's secure high walled CCTV and alarm festooned South West London home was so ludicrous that he couldn't possibly be found guilty. That hope quickly floated away in court when the prosecution barrister got her turn to question him and wasted no time in raking up his past convictions. A jury did not find the idea of him abducting Holly Willoughby ludicrous - especially when they were reminded of his criminal history and given stark evidence of Plumb's grim and vile online posts and video messages from the months before his arrest. The master of Gavin Plumb's own downfall was none other than himself. Plumb had sowed the self-destructive seeds of his doom long before he landed in court on these bizarre planned kidnap and murder allegations. Not just through his obsessive and disturbing activity in the bleak corners of the internet where he endlessly discussed, in highly unpleasant (if somewhat unrealistic) detail, his plan to abduct Holly Willoughby but also his past conduct and convictions in the real world. Four women, two of them only sixteen at the time, were harrowing proof that Gavin Plumb was not merely an online fantasist. His past criminal convictions were not dark fan fiction or online fantasies. They really happened. There were others too. An ex-partner who accused him of domestic violence and sexual abuse and an unnamed woman who said Plumb raped her in 2008. Gavin Plumb's history of violence and sexual abuse towards women - which resulted in two convictions and two prison sentences - afforded him few favours at his 2024 trial. Gavin Plumb's attempt in court to portray himself as an online fantasist who wasn't like that in real life was at odds with his ACTUAL history. This was a very obvious and serious handicap to Plumb's defence team in court. The best they could do was ask the jury not to hold past convictions from long ago against him and simply focus only on the case in hand. In the end that wasn't enough. It was impossible for the jury not to take Plumb's past convictions into consideration because they seemed very relevant to the charges he now faced. And it wasn't a simple question of whether Gavin Plumb was capable of this audacious celebrity kidnapping himself (to which the answer would almost certainly be NO given that Plumb was obese, unfit, and didn't even drive or have a car). The question of whether Plumb had sought willing accomplices to aid him in this kidnapping was a considerable factor in the trial he would face in 2024. Plumb's electronic devices were chock full of evidence which proved beyond doubt he had solicited help online. There were thousands of private messages flying back and forth online where Plumb is plainly attempting to put a 'team' together for the purpose of abducting Holly Willoughby. There wasn't much proof though that anyone had actually agreed to help him. Some of the men on these forums were patently disturbed but even they weren't crazy enough to commit themselves to helping someone they'd never met kidnap Holly Willoughby. They were not that stupid. They knew that Gavin Plumb's unrefined and plainly deficient plan of action only had one ending - abject failure leading to arrest and prison. Would though Gavin Plumb have at least tried to carry out the abduction if he had others stupid and crazy enough to help him? This was the question a jury would have to consider. It was the whole foundation of the case. When it came to Holly Willoughby, was Gavin Plumb simply an obsessed bedroom fantasist or was he a genuine threat? The prosecution case was that Plumb never saw himself as a 'lone wolf' in this abduction. They argued that Plumb saw himself as a ringleader. He knew he needed assistance and much of his online activity was geared to this end. There was one other big difference between Gavin Plumb and Frederick Clegg. Plumb made no promises not to harm or abuse Holly Willoughby. In fact, the way Gavin Plumb told it online and in private messages, that was the whole point of the alleged kidnap plan in the first place. Disgusting cyber vomit on this theme poured from the dark corners of Plumb's mind to the dark corners of the net for the best part of two years. Though he would tell a courtroom he only thought about Holly Willoughby about five or six times a day, in reality Gavin Plumb had somehow turned typing all the horrible things he wanted to do to Willoughby into a full time job. Gavin Plumb's life was empty. He had no hobbies, no creative outlets, no group of friends. He lived alone. There were long periods when he couldn't even go outside due to his weight. Any employment was sporadic and usually short lived. Often left with literally nothing to do all day, Plumb, thanks to daytime television, began to develop an unhealthy obsession with Holly Willoughby. This obsession slowly but surely seemed to take over his entire life. Gavin Plumb was born in Essex in February 1987. It was a typical working-class ordinary childhood of the type that millions have experienced. Gavin Plumb spent most of his life living in Harlow, Waltham Abbey and Loughton and has three brothers and a half-brother. His father was a man named Adrian Broad but Broad left the family when Gavin Plumb was very young - so young in fact that Gavin Plumb barely had any memories of him. Broad later said he didn't abandon the family and tried to stay in touch with his children. He said his contact being non-existent when his kids were very young was no fault of his own and then, when they got a bit older, they chose not to remain in contact with him. Gavin Plumb, despite being born Gavin Broad, therefore took the surname of his stepfather. Adrian Broad said the reason he lost contact with his kids when they were young is that he had nowhere to host them at weekends. Whatever the truth, he drifted out of their lives and didn't seem to be terribly missed. Those that knew the young Gavin Plumb, who was raised by his mother (Mrs Plumb has studiously and sensibly kept out of the public eye and so very little is known about her) and stepfather (who worked as a security guard), described him as something of a mummy's boy. He could never do anything wrong as far as his mother was concerned - though Plumb would of course test this maternal loyalty in extreme ways. Nonetheless, it is said that his mother stood by him after his 2024 conviction and whenever he got into trouble in the past she always turned up in court. While she obviously didn't approve of his activities on the net and was disappointed by what she heard at Chelmsford Crown Court in 2024,, Plumb's mother most likely did not believe that her son ever intended to really kidnap and murder Holly Willoughby. Mrs Plumb had known long before the events of 2023 and 2024 though that there was a darkness to her son. A troubled and unfathomable aspect to his character which had surfaced before. She must have hoped this side of him was long gone but in 2023 her son would land in his hottest water yet. No one could have possibly predicted though the odd and unusual circumstances of Plumb's latest brush with the law. Gavin Plumb was always big for his size but he didn't throw his weight around as a child or come off as a bully. Quite the opposite. He was actually, given his size, a strangely meek child - which was a contrast to his personality as an adult. The police later released the footage of Plumb's arrest in 2023 and Gavin Plumb comes off as a confident and assertive person in the footage. He isn't the least bit intimidated by his flat being full of police officers and even tells one of them off for smashing his door in. As a child and teenager though he was a less confident sort of character. As an adult, Gavin Plumb DID exhibit cowardly bullying tendencies but only with women. He never picked on anyone his own size. Plumb was about thirteen when his weight became a serious health problem and something he found impossible to get under control. He wasn't a very tall person either so the weight was even more of a burden. It would eventually get a lot worse too. Plumb would later become absolutely gargantuan in this thirties - to the point where he could barely stand up and suffered from constant pain. At that point he took drastic action and applied to have gastric band surgery. In a roundabout way this would actually become a subplot of his 2024 trial. The prosecution argued that Plumb's main motivation for losing weight had been so he was fit enough to participate in an abduction - with Holly Willoughby the designated target. Gavin Plumb said his weight caused him great sadness when he was younger because he was too unfit to play football anymore. It made him feel estranged from normal boys his own age because they were all running around and full of energy whereas he was this unfit lumbering kid who just had to watch sadly from the side-lines rather than take part in anything. This was the story of his adult life too for the most part. Gavin Plumb came to feel that life was something which only happened to other people. It left him with deep and enduring feelings of bitterness and frustration. Gavin Plumb attended Burnt Mill School in Harlow, Essex. This school was established in 1962 and was a comprehensive when Plumb went there. The famous footballer (and later the England manager) Glenn Hoddle went to this school. These days the school is called Burnt Mill Academy. Plumb, according to other ex-pupils, suffered from bullying at the school and was someone who stayed on the fringes of school life and kept himself to himself. He certainly wasn't confident or assertive in his early years. This detachment was a pattern that Plumb would later repeat for much of his adult life. In the last couple of places he lived before his 2023 arrest, most of his neighbours told the media that they never actually had a conversation with him and described Plumb as a reclusive sort of character. During his trial, Plumb told the court that he was not popular with girls at school and was - at best - always a friend and never a boyfriend. This is speculated to have left him with a lingering bitterness towards women - who he tended in the end to see as mere objects to be taken by force rather than human beings. His criminal convictions and later online activities revealed a disturbing misogynistic streak which seemed to have become increasingly dominant in his personality. Gavin Plumb was not very academic at school and never terribly bright. When his online posts were later revealed in extensive detail they were, despite the fact they had been posted by someone in their mid to late thirties, riddled with childlike spelling mistakes. The best that Gavin Plumb could hope for when he left school was to follow in the footsteps of his stepfather and become a security guard. The defence tried to use the fact that Gavin Plumb was not the sharpest tool in the box to their advantage in the Holly Willoughby abduction trial. They argued that Plumb, besides the fact he was overweight and clumsy, lacked even a semblance of the intelligence and organisational planning required to successfully kidnap a major celebrity. Gavin Plumb never had any great ambitions or much sense of direction in life. Because he had no goals and just ambled through a mundane low-wage/unemployment benefits sort of life with no connections or privilege to fall back on, Plumb became increasingly vulnerable to the rabbit hole of fantasy. Most of us prefer fantasy to harsh reality and Gavin Plumb was no different. The difference was the obnoxious and nasty brand of fantasy that appealed to him. He became addicted to sick online chat groups which were populated by sex offenders and stalkers. These were places where you could say anything you wanted. Plumb seemed to think that fantasy was a place you can permanently move into and stay - which it assuredly isn't. The tension between fantasy and reality became one of the salient factors in sealing the fate of Gavin Plumb. He began to rapidly lose his grip on the real world and that grip had never been very firm to begin with. Although he was depicted in the media as some perpetual lifelong hermit loner who only ever existed online and rarely went outside (which did become the case for a time when his weight made it impossible for him to work or go outdoors), Gavin Plumb was the father of two children. This all happened when he was very young and ill equipped to cope with such responsibilities (although Gavin Plumb was probably never really equipped to be a supportive and dutiful parent at any time in his life). The mother of his children was a woman named Laura Roberts. Plumb had known Laura Roberts since they were eleven (they got to know each through Laura's sister being a classmate of Plumb) but they only started going out in their late teens. It is safe to say that Laura Roberts did not exactly hit the jackpot with Gavin Plumb. Given a choice, he probably wouldn't have been the first person she chose to have children with. There is a photograph online of Plumb and Laura Roberts posing with their first child. Plumb is grinning like an idiot and seems genuinely happy. The smile of Laura Roberts for the benefit of the photograph is a trifle more forced and less natural. While it is impossible to look at this photograph now in a neutral way without using hindsight, there is something slightly off about Laura Roberts in the picture nonetheless. She looks more like someone is a hostage video than some happy young mother in love. Laura Roberts was petite and dark haired in the photograph. She was a fairly attractive young woman who looked like she could do a lot better than Gavin Plumb. Laura had a son in 2007 and then fell pregnant again in 2008 with what turned out to be a daughter. Happy family life proved elusive though for Laura Roberts and Gavin Plumb. Though he later tried to blame Laura for things turning sour between them, it was in fact Gavin Plumb who caused all the problems. He was not cut out for family life and responsibilities - especially at such a young age. He was unreliable and often out of work. He was also abusive and controlling. Life with Gavin Plumb eventually turned into a nightmare for Laura Roberts. Laura later told the media, in the aftermath of his 2024 trial, that her life with Gavin Plumb had been awful and she was subject to a lot of violence in the few years they were together. She said she wasn't surprised at all to learn in 2023 that Gavin Plumb was planning to kidnap someone. Laura wasn't surprised by news of Plumb's earlier convictions either. Laura Roberts said even if it hadn't been Holly Willoughby, Plumb would have been planning to kidnap someone else. She hated Gavin Plumb with a passion and let him have both barrels in the media when she finally got the chance to speak. Gavin Plumb briefly had a job at McDonald's around this time but he was often unemployed too. In the end there were arguments between Plumb and Laura and worse. He would beat and threaten her and she lived in constant fear. Gavin Plumb later said that Laura would tell him he was useless and make it plain he wasn't exactly her first choice when it came to a partner. He said this made life with Laura a misery for him. But life with Plumb was a much bigger misery for Laura. Plumb didn't have to worry about domestic violence or being raped like Laura did with him. Laura Roberts was only 5 foot tall and tiny while Plumb was a huge lunk of a man. It was a complete mismatch. Laura said that Plumb became domineering and aggressive in the end. He often took all of her money and spent it on junk food. A friend of Laura Roberts told the media many years later (after the 2024 trial) that Gavin Plumb had seemed perfectly decent and normal at first but about eight months into his relationship with Laura (which lasted around three years in total) he turned violent and controlling and acted as if Laura was not a girlfriend or the mother of his children but some sort of mute slave who had to obey him at all times. The horrified friend of Laura came to believe that Plumb was a disturbed and highly dangerous man who craved having a frightened woman under his complete control. Laura said that Gavin Plumb would even tightly control who she was allowed to talk to (thus estranging her from friends and family) so in the end she felt more like a lonely hostage or isolated prisoner than someone in a normal relationship. Laura believed that Gavin Plumb enjoyed it when she was scared of him. He enjoyed having that power over another person. At this early stage of his life we can already see then the signs of the dysfunction which would later land Gavin Plumb in prison on no less than three occasions. Gavin Plumb, predictably, told a very different story about his time with Laura Plumb when he spoke about his background in court. He described their relationship as toxic but pinned the blame on Laura and said she was the one who made it toxic by constantly belittling him and generally making his life a misery. Gavin Plumb's attempt to put a more sympathetic spin on himself during his time with Laura Roberts was not terribly convincing. It was certainly a stretch to imagine that this huge and plainly dangerous man would ever willingly endure a situation where he was under the thumb and bullied by a tiny woman. While there was a brief period at the start where the couple seemed to get on and other periods where Laura seemed to stick it out purely for the sake of the children, it all quickly turned sour. It is hard to see really what Laura saw in Gavin Plumb (who was no Brad Pitt) in the first place. Perhaps she initially felt sorry for this apparently meek lonely teenage gentle giant and so developed a soft spot for him? Despite the fact he was supposed to be with Laura Roberts (though the relationship was gradually crumbling) a woman named Ellie Hoad also dated Plumb for two months in 2007. Laura Roberts seemed to get the dark version of Plumb but Hoad got a more innocuous version. Ellie Hoad said Plumb was quiet, friendly and had a good sense of humour. According to Ellie, although they went to the cinema a few times initially, Plumb spent most of his time playing video games and rarely if ever came outside - which perhaps explains why the relationship didn't last very long. A boyfriend who refuses to leave the house or go out is probably not the most interesting of companions in the long run. Ellie Hoad said she was surprised when Gavin Plumb's crimes and Holly Willoughby abduction plan came to light in the media because she hadn't detected any darkness or malevolence about him. "I just can't get my head around it, that he's gone from the shy, quiet person I knew back all those years ago to now he wants to do this," she said.As we have already noted, this was not the case for Laura Roberts though. She wasn't surprised at all when she learned about Plumb's convictions and crazy abduction scheme. Ellie Hoad knew Plumb for far less time than Laura Roberts and unlike Laura Roberts she didn't have to live with him. It seems likely that if she had lived with Plumb for an extended period then she might have seen the darkness and controlling nature of his character come out. Laura Roberts on the other hand knew Gavin Plumb long enough to know he was a dangerous man. The police have since confirmed that Plumb was arrested for domestic violence while he was with Laura Roberts. This was the first inkling that Plumb was a dark character most likely destined to end up behind bars in the end. This prophecy came true much sooner than anyone, perhaps even Plumb himself, could have predicted. A lot of Gavin Plumb's tawdry fantasies at this time seemed to revolve around female air-stewardesses. These fantasies may have abounded from his day to day life in this specific period. Plumb had a job at the time servicing ticket machines in car parks and he often used the Stansted Express to get around to these car parks. The Stansted Express is a direct train service linking London Liverpool Street to London Stansted Airport. When he used the train, Plumb would quite often see female air-stewardesses on their way to work in their uniforms. This planted the seed of a truly insane plan in his mind. Plumb decided he would abduct one of these female air-stewardesses from the train. CHAPTER TWO