Plot to kidnap, murder and rape Holly Willoughby had a ‘life changing’ impact on the TV star and Gavin Plumb’s plans were ‘so depraved and vile’ they cannot be made public, court hears as security guard is sentenced

The depraved 35-stone loner plotted to ambush the former This Morning presenter at her London home in the dead of night, using chloroform to knock Ms Willoughby and her husband Dan Baldwin.

He would then take the 43-year-old presenter captive, holding her in an isolated ‘dungeon’ which he described as ‘death row’, repeatedly raping her before slitting her throat and murdering her.

Plumb wept after jurors unanimously convicted him of soliciting murder and inciting rape and kidnap following an earlier trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, where he is today being sentenced.

His ‘carefully planned’ plot, some details of which were ‘so depraved and vile’ that they were not reported by the media, was said to have a ‘catastrophic’ and ‘life changing’ impact on Ms Willoughby.

Plumb planned his ‘home invasion’ of Ms Willoughby’s London property with accomplices he met on the web.

As part of his online chats, the defendant sent a potential accomplice a video of restraint ‘kit’ items laid out on a bed, Chelmsford Crown Court heard.

In a message from Plumb read to the court, he outlined the masked raid, saying: ‘We break in when they are in bed, we hold both at a weapon point, tell both to roll over on there [sic] fronts with there [sic] hands behind their backs. With Dan we use the metal cable ties, with Holly we’ll use the handcuffs etc…’

He planned to use chloroform on Holly and her husband Dan Baldwin while striking in the dead of night.

Jurors heard that Plumb assembled a ‘restraint kit’, which he filmed laid out on his bed. Hand and ankle shackles, a ball gag, cat o’nine tails, metal cable ties and rope were among the items said to have been put together by the 37-year-old.

Earlier in the trial the jury heard Plumb, of Harlow, Essex, discussing a ‘dungeon-style room’ big enough for a bed where the 43-year-old presenter would be held captive.

He allegedly said the things he planned to do to the former This Morning host would put him on ‘death row’.

Plumb had ‘highly sexualised’ conversations with his online contacts about Ms Willoughby and other celebrities and had ‘millions’ of saved images, many deep fake porn.

The trial was told that Plumb’s plans were foiled when a potential accomplice who he spoke to online turned out to be an undercover officer from the Owatonna Police Department in the US state of Minnesota.

Plumb told the officer, who was using the pseudonym David Nelson, that he was ‘definitely serious’ about his plot to kidnap Ms Willoughby, leaving the officer with the impression that there was an ‘imminent threat’ to her.

The policeman had never heard of the TV presenter but felt sufficiently concerned about her safety that he contacted Plumb to find out more about his plans.

Mr Nelson had been speaking with the security guard for just over a day before he police battered down his front door in Harlow and hauled him away in cuffs.

While the US-based officer’s real name will never be known to protect his safety and avoid jeapordising future investigations, his work was absolutely crucial to bringing Plumb to justice.

Mr Nelson told Chelmsford Crown Court that Abduct Lovers was a group on an encrypted messaging app called Kik where users discussed kidnap, rape, and murder.

The officer, who specialises in using social media to identify planned abductions, rapes and murders, said Plumb came to his attention on October 3 last year after posting four photos of Ms Willoughby, who he didn’t recognise at the time, with the words ‘the one in the public eye that I want’.

After contacting Plumb – who used the handle Big Bear – he used ‘open questions’ to establish the level of his intent and was told he had an ‘abduction kit’. He also received a photo of a bottle of chloroform, a powerful anaesthetic.

‘At that point in the conversation, it was quite alarming,’ he told jurors.

Mr Nelson also asked for details of the plot and was told: ‘We’ll jump the outer wall, break in, chloroform both her and her husband, tie both up with zip ties and gag both, take her out of the house and take her out in her car.’

Plumb added: ‘When we get board [sic] of her, then we get rid… Wash her in bleach and put her into a lake at night. Once she’s had her throat cut of course.’

Mr Nelson sent photos of a computer screen showing the purchase of a plane ticket and another with a fake ID to ‘gain trust’ with Plumb.

Mr Nelson agreed ‘the bulk of conversations’ were mere fantasy but added: ‘None [was] as specific as this.’ Plumb’s posts were ‘enough to set off alarm bells’, he added.

Mr Nelson, from the Owatonna Police Department in Minnesota, said the kidnap, rape and murder plot would have been ‘carried out with or without my services’.

Asked if the fact the defendant was ‘significantly overweight’ would have affected the credibility of his plan to invade Ms Willoughby’s home before ‘jumping over a wall’ when leaving, he replied: ‘No, it did not.’

The officer said the Abduct Lovers group had come to his attention because of its name.

After seeing the public post from Plumb which said he had a ‘load of info’ on Ms Willoughby, he said it had caused him enough ‘concern’ to message him privately.

The undercover officer agreed that the defendant shared ‘what appeared to be the address’ of Ms Willoughby with him online.

When Plumb was arrested on October 4 last year and officers told him that the allegations concerned Ms Willoughby, the defendant told them: ‘I’m not gonna lie, she is a fantasy of mine.’

The Dancing On Ice star waived her right to anonymity in connection with the charge against Plumb of assisting or encouraging rape.

Plumb has previous convictions for the attempted kidnap and false imprisonment of four women in three incidents.

One victim was targeted by Plumb while on her way to work at an airport in 2006.

The air hostess was sat alone at the back of the train when Plumb, who was armed with a replica gun and a rope, perched next to her and slide her a note telling her to get off the train quietly.

Luckily she was able to signal to other passengers that she was in distress and when they came over to help her, Plumb immediately fled.

Recalling the moment Plumb revealed his twisted intentions, the air hostess told the BBC: ‘He passed me a note, I thought it’s just some piece of paper, I didn’t even look what he was doing. I ignored it.

‘Then he pushed it forward for me to read and when I read it, it was something along the lines of “get off the train with me, be quiet, don’t do anything, get off the train with me and nothing will happen to anybody”.

‘He had a rope and replica gun on him. As I read that note it was only then I looked at him. My first impression was that: he is huge, I have no chance.’

The woman then remembered that the next train station was in a small village, which would likely be quiet at that time, and was surrounded by trees and woods.

She began thinking of some of the ‘worst scenarios’ in her head and began desperately looking to other passengers for help.

She caught eyes with another woman who alerted another man at the other end of the carriage and both began to approach Plumb.

As soon as they did, Plumb got up and fled the train but days later he targeted another woman on a train, again wearing an air hostess uniform.

She luckily also managed to escape unharmed and Plumb was subsequently given a  suspended sentence for both attempted kidnaps.

The woman believes that by not receiving a custodial sentence, Plumb went on thinking he ‘could go unpunished doing whatever he did’.

Plumb previously appeared in a standalone feature on the BBC’s website in 2018 describing ‘how he turned his life around and is now looking to the future with renewed hope’.

There is no suggestion the BBC News was aware of his previous convictions at the time the article was published.

Plumb, who was 35 stone at his heaviest, said he worked at Pizza Hut and McDonald’s in the past but gave up after his weight became unmanageable. He described his day-to-day life in the BBC feature, which came to light after his arrest.

Segments show him describing being in pain due to his weight, discussing how he had not left his flat in four years and stating that he only stepped outside to put a binbag of rubbish in his bin.

He is also seen saying how he was ‘frustrated’ he couldn’t play football.

Plumb once said he only ever walked out of his front door to go to the communal bins and didn’t leave the house for years at one stage.

He had a gastric band fitted in 2018 and went on a liquid diet, but still remained severely obese.

Prior to his arrest, he had got a job as a security guard at The Pinnacles Shopping Centre in Harlow, Essex.

Turning to the offending of the 37-year-old during his sentencing today, Alison Morgan KC said: ‘My Lord knows of the extreme and gratuitous degradation of the victim that was planned by this defendant.

‘Degradation that was so depraved and vile that they were, by agreement, not reported in detail by representatives of the media.’

Ms Morgan KC said the case had a ‘catastrophic impact’ on Holly Willoughby and had been ‘life changing for the victim… both in private and personal terms and, indeed, professionally’.

‘The extent of the shock and fear of this offending has been impossible to convey… it’s investable that [the trial] has exacerbated the trauma for this victim.

‘We say more broadly that offending of this type, as Miss Willoughby said in her public statement has a broad impact on women. Women should not feel unsafe when going about their daily lives.’

Ms Morgan gave details of victim impact statements made by two of Plumb’s previous victims, although she conceded they didn’t have a direct bearing on the offences the defendant was being sentenced for today.

The first was from one of the air stewardesses who Plumb attempted to kidnap in 2006, although the prosecutor said she wasn’t naming her.

‘She felt extremely vulnerable. She was crying. She burst into tears. She then recalls how she felt having been told that as a result of that offence the defendant receiving a suspended sentence.

‘She then realised that this defendant would be able to know where she was. to find her potentially. To know from the circumstances of the offence the clothing that she was wearing, where she walked.

‘She sought support from the police in that regard and felt vulnerable for some time.

‘She lived in the same area and used the same routes. That sense of vulnerability was only removed when she moved from the area.

‘She feared all men as perpetrators and when near men whether she was safe.

‘She stopped going out after dark and looked around her to see if anyone was there.’

Using the woman’s words directly, she added: ‘I clearly remember when Gavin Plumb grabbed my leg. How it felt to have his hand on me. It was a disgusting feeling.

‘Knowing of these [new] offences, it has brought up a lot of emotions.’

The second victim impact statement came from a woman who was a teenager when she was falsely imprisoned by Plumb in 2008 when he bundled her and another girl at knifepoint into a stockroom at Woolworths where they all worked.

Miss Morgan said: ‘She felt a permanent sense of worry as the defendant remained in the same area as she did in Harlow.

‘She worried she would bump into him when he was released. Although there was an order that stopped him from contacting her, she felt a sense of fear returning to work and in particular where the incident took place.

‘Hearing of these matters made her think of what could have happened to her if she had not managed to run away from him.

‘She’s thankful it did not turn out worse.’

Sasha Wass KC, defending, said her client had read Miss Willoughby’ victim impact statement.

‘Mr Plumb both worshipped and was obsessed by Miss Willoughby for a period of years,’ she told the judge.

‘Admittedly in a warped and bizarre manner that he described as ‘dark’ when he gave evidence. But nonetheless he worshipped her and he was devastated to have been the cause of such pain to her as she described in her statement.

‘Of course, Mr Plumb remains embarrassed and ashamed at the online conversations that came into focus [as a result of the trial]. He always expected them to remain private.’

Ms Wass said her client’s offences ‘remained at the planning stage and all the offences were about planning’.

She continued: ‘Mr Plumb never left his house… has never been in the area where Miss Willoughby lived. He was never able to drive and he did not have access to a car and he was completely incapable of scaling any perimeter walls.’

There was also ‘no viable plan as to how she could be kept in his [home] address’ before being transferred to an isolated building where she would be held captive.