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A convicted rapist planned to kidnap, rape and kill Holly Willoughby but was foiled by a US-based undercover officer, a court heard.
Gavin Plumb, 37, was obsessed with the TV presenter, Chelmsford Crown Court heard. He carefully planned how to kidnap her from her home, take her to his residence in Harlow, Essex, and kill her in a derelict building, the jury was told.
Plumb has previous convictions for attempted kidnapping and false imprisonment, the jury was told. He tried to get two women off a train with a fake gun and a threatening note in 2006, before trying to tie up two teenage girls in a Woolworths warehouse in 2008.
The security guard engaged in graphic and sexually motivated discussions about the planned assault online, prosecutors said.
Plumb was unaware that one of the people he was communicating with was an undercover police officer based out of the Owatonna Police Department in Minnesota, who had alerted UK authorities, triggering Plumb’s arrest on October 4, 2023.
Plumb is charged with solicitation to commit murder, abetting or abetting the commission of kidnapping and abetting or abetting the commission of rape. He denies all the charges.
Opening the case, prosecutor Alison Morgan QC told the jury: “The defendant’s plans for what he was going to do to Holly Willoughby were graphic and clearly sexually motivated.
“They were real to him and based on an obsession with Mrs Willoughby that had developed over several years.
“It wasn’t just the ramblings of a dreamer,” she added.
Plumb collected information about Willoughby on social media and tracked her activities and movements, Morgan said. But he had “real experience of violence against women”, the prosecutor said.
On August 14, 2006, the court heard how the defendant approached a woman on a train and showed her a graphic and threatening note.
The court heard how two days later he tried a similar approach with an imitation firearm, but the victim refused to get off the train with him. Plumb was arrested and found to be in possession of an imitation firearm, ropes and various notes.
Two years later, in November 2008, Plumb was working at Woolworths in Harlow, where he forced two 16-year-olds into the warehouse at knifepoint and tied the hands of one of the girls before the other ran off and raised the alarm.
“These were real crimes committed against real women involving this defendant threatening them and trying to control and restrain them,” Morgan told jurors.
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