A morbidly obese security guard accused of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby today told a court his ‘stewardess fantasy’ drove him to try and abduct a female flight attendant on a train.
Gavin Plumb, from Harlow in Essex, was sworn in as a witness at Chelmsford Crown Court this morning accompanied by two dock officers. Asked by the judge if he could stand for his evidence, the overweight defendant replied: ‘I won’t be able to.’
The 37-year-old was then quizzed about some of his previous convictions, including his attempt to kidnap two women from separate trains in August 2006.
Questioned on why he had attempted to kidnap the first air hostess, with the threat a note which said he would shoot her, defence barrister Sasha Wass KC said: ‘What was going through your mind when you wrote those notes?’
Plumb said: ‘For me it was my only option – being in the relationship I was in, it was toxic – I was extremely young and I needed to get out.’
Ms Wass went on: ‘How did you think sending a note like that to a female on a train was getting you out of your relationship?’
The defendant said: ‘It was going to get me caught. It was going to get me incarcerated.’
Asked if the fact the two women he attempted to kidnap were air stewardesses, Plumb said: ‘I had a stewardess fantasy back then.’
Plumb claimed before jurors that he ‘wasn’t aware’ he had an imitation firearm with him ‘until I got arrested’ after approaching a woman on a train and showing her a note telling her to get off it.
The defendant said that three rope ligatures, found on him on the day of the incident on August 16, 2006, ‘were just lying round the car park’, adding: ‘If I found something like that, I would reuse it.’
He said he was remanded in custody and Chelmsford Crown Court heard he later admitted attempted kidnap over the offence and was given a suspended sentence.
Plumb told jurors ‘I think I went back to my ex-partner’ afterwards.
Asked about an incident in December 2008, for which he was sentenced to 32 months in prison for the false imprisonment of two girls in a Woolworths, he said he had a ‘box-cutting safety knife’ with him.
He said that he believed rope, that he allegedly pulled from his pocket, was ‘already in the warehouse’.
Asked what had been going through his mind at the time of the incident, Plumb said: ‘I just needed a way out of the relationship (with his ex-partner), knowing it worked the first time.
‘I thought I would try something really big again to get away from the relationship.’
Plumb served 16 months in prison, and said that after being released in 2010 he spent ‘99.9%’ of his time online.
He told jurors: ‘If I wasn’t on the (game) console, I would be on the phone, and if I wasn’t on the phone, I would be on the console.’
The defendant also said he would communicate with others on ‘fantasy’ chatrooms between 2010 and 2013.
Defence barrister Ms Wass asked: ‘What sort of fantasy sites would you involve yourself with?’
‘It was all clean, it was all fantasy chat.’
He added: ‘It would vary… people we knew, people we didn’t know.’
Ms Wass continued: ‘What would you fantasise about?’
Plumb replied: ‘Having sex with them.’
Plumb said images he looked at around this time ‘could be celebrities or random people that came off various sites’. He admitted ‘briefly’ having an interest in Holly Willoughby in this period, lasting around 2010 to 2013.
Asked by Ms Wass about earlier online chat about ‘sexual fantasy’, Plumb said ‘it was wholesome chat, clean chat, it was nowhere like as dark as it is in the sequence of events’ evidence shown to jurors.
Ms Wass said: ‘During this period when you were on your own, living on your own housebound, what sort of conversations were you having online?’
Plumb replied: ‘It was having sex with certain people, people who were brought up in chats and stuff like that.’
Further questioned about this, he said: ‘People from different chatrooms that were posted and then celebrities.’
Asked if Ms Willoughby was ‘on your radar’ at the time, he said she ‘would have been – I was at home all the time watching daytime telly’.
Previously the court heard how Plumb sent messages to a man called Marc in which he discussed abducting Ms Willoughby before taking her away to a ‘dungeon’.
Today he told jurors the plan was merely a ‘fantasy’, adding: ‘Looking back at it now, it’s something that is massively regrettable because it’s not the kind of chat I would normally participate in.’
Plumb, who wore a grey tracksuit top, dark jogging bottoms and black trainers, told jurors that he had his first and only ‘serious relationship’ at 18.
Asked by Ms Wass about relationships with girls, the defendant said he was ‘regularly in the friend zone’, adding: ‘I was regularly their friends, nothing more.’
He agreed that his first girlfriend was at 18, adding: ‘My first serious relationship, yes.’
Plumb agreed that his relationship with the woman lasted ‘about four-and-a-half years’ and that it was his ‘only serious relationship’.
Asked to describe the relationship, Plumb said it was ‘extremely toxic’, adding: ‘There was constant arguments.
‘The things a couple were doing, having a normal relationship, we weren’t doing. We were constantly at each other.’
Plumb said Ms Willoughby was his ‘celebrity crush’ and he would think about her ‘four, five, six times’ a day.
Ms Wass asked: ‘How serious was this crush?’
Plumb said: ‘It was … I don’t quite know how to explain it.’
Ms Wass went on: ‘How many times a day would you think of her?’
After Plumb said he was not sure, Ms Wass added: ‘Did you think of her every day?’
The defendant replied: ‘It would depend on how many times I would chat about her. Some days it would be once, some days it would be four, five, six times.’
Plumb was also asked about a ‘kit’ he had assembled that included a whip, lead, shackles, blindfold and clamps with black rope.
The defendant said most of the items were purchased on Amazon but he bought cable ties separately, and later.
Asked by Ms Wass if, by the time of his arrest in 2023, ‘any of this equipment (had) been used on anybody other than yourself’, Plumb replied: ‘No.’
The barrister asked Plumb: ‘Had you been involved in any sexual relationships using any of this?’
He replied: ‘No.’
Plumb was asked about his weight, telling the court it was ‘ballooning to dangerous levels’ and that was was ‘housebound’ after reaching 35 stone.
‘I physically couldn’t move without being in pain or being breathless,’ he said.
Asked by Ms Wass if he ever left the house, Plumb said: ‘Only to go to the doctor’s or to hospital appointments’.
The defendant continued: ‘It was making me feel so low to the point I felt I didn’t want to speak to anybody because I was a burden because of my weight.
‘I had to have members of my family come over to help me with my housework.’
He agreed that in 2018 he had an operation.
Plumb denies soliciting murder, incitement to rape and incitement to kidnap, and the trial continues.