A ‘sad, lonely’ security guard enjoyed the ‘fun’ of planning Holly Willoughby‘s abduction but never intended to attempt it in real life, his lawyer told his trial today.
Gavin Plumb, a 37-year-old from Harlow in Essex, is accused of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder the TV presenter.
But Tuesday his defence counsel, Sasha Wass KC, said the ‘fun’ of the fantasy ‘was the planning’ and not its execution.
The barrister conceded her client’s comments in chat rooms, including one called ‘Abduct Lovers’, were ‘vile and misogynistic’.
But she claimed they were made by ‘an isolated and lonely individual’ who had ‘neither the means, nor the opportunity’ to carry out the offences he is charged with.
Ms Wass made her comments during the defence’s closing speech in the trial of the obese security guard, who is accused of planning a terrifying raid on Ms Willoughby’s London home.
The prosecution claim he intended to knock out the former This Morning presenter and her husband, Dan Baldwin, 49, before holding her to a ‘dungeon-style’ room.
It is alleged the mother-of-three, 43, would be repeatedly raped and subjected to se-ual torture before her throat would be slit and her body thrown in a lake at night.
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Ms Wass told the jury today: ‘What the prosecution suggests is that when Mr Plumb spoke of a home invasion of the celebrity Holly Willoughby, that was something he actually proposed to do.
‘The prosecution suggests that when he spoke of keeping Holly Willoughby prisoner in his own flat while he and his Holly Willoughby fans had s-x with her, he actually planned that is what would happen.
‘And when he spoke to slitting Ms Willoughby’s throat, covering her in bleach and putting her in a lake, this is something he intended.
‘But what he was actually doing was living out a fantasy. A dark and twisted fantasy – but a fantasy nonetheless.’
