A former constable accused of attacking a police inspector who he caught having sex with his policewoman wife today claimed the couple battered him when he found them ‘sh******g’ in a Screwfix car park.
Gavin Harper, 45, said acting Inspector Andrew McLullich and his estranged wife Pc Stephanie Glynn started punching and kicking him when he discovered their affair.
‘That is probably the worst thing,’ Harper told Liverpool Crown Court. ‘I was thinking, how has my life gone from being happily married to being on a Screwfix car park having the sh*t kicked out of me by my wife?’
Harper is on trial accused of stalking his wife and wounding married Mr McLullich during the confrontation, in February 2021.
But today he told the jury that he only punched Mr McLullich ‘three or four times’ in self-defence. And he claimed the couple, who both worked for Merseyside police, assaulted him when they realised he was filming their sexual encounter on his mobile phone and feared they would lose their jobs.
Former Merseyside Police Constable Gavin Harper, 45, arriving at Liverpool Crown Court today
Pc Stephanie Glynn, 40, was in a relationship with Harper for six years before they married in 2018. She told him their marriage was over and moved out in November 2020
Giving evidence in his defence, Harper told his barrister, Suzanne Payne, that he had suspected the pair were having an affair for months.
He followed them to the car park of the Birkenhead branch of Screwfix, late in the evening of February 16 2021, after he placed a tracker device on his wife’s vehicle.
But he claimed he did not drive to the car park ‘for violence.’
Miss Payne asked: ‘What did you think you needed to do?’
Harper replied: ‘Get undeniable proof they were having an affair, a sexual affair, by videoing it and then giving it to the police.’
Miss Payne said: ‘For what purpose?’
Harper said: ‘That two serving officers were having an affair during Covid.’
Stephanie Glynn and Andrew McLullich were discovered in the car park of Screwfix in Birkenhead, Liverpool (pictured)
Stephanie Glynn and Gavin Harper on their wedding day in 2018
Harper said acting Inspector Andrew McLullich and his estranged wife Pc Stephanie Glynn started punching and kicking him when he discovered their affair
Harper told the court he pulled open the rear door of Mr McLullich’s Kia Sportage and heard his wife screaming: ‘It’s Gav, it’s Gav.’
Mr McLullich, who was on his knees in the footwell with her legs either side of him, immediately turned round and began repeatedly punching him, Harper said.
After Mr McLullich got out of the vehicle and pulled up his trousers, Harper claimed he ‘came at me again.’ Harper admitted he retaliated, punching Mr McLullich ‘three or four times,’ but claimed he soon ran out of energy and gave up defending himself.
He said his wife, who now goes by her maiden name of Stephanie Glynn, 40, was naked from the waist down apart from a pair of distinctive black socks with diamonds on them.
‘She was saying, ‘get his phone, get his phone,’’ Harper said.
He claimed Mr McLullich tried to get his phone out of his pocket and he ended up on the floor, with his wife kicking him.
‘I was trying to get myself into a ball to protect myself because he was punching hell out of me,’ Harper said. ‘She came at me and started kicking me on my right side.
‘That is probably the worst thing out of all of it. I was thinking, how has my life gone from being happily married to being on a Screwfix car park having the sh*t kicked out of me by my wife?
‘Steph said, ‘just leave it’ and they stopped. I was able to get back on my feet. I was dazed, confused and could feel my face was in pain.’
Harper claimed he and the couple exchanged ‘a lot of verbals’ and Mr McLullich said: ‘You’re f****d, you’re getting locked up,’ before adding: ‘It’s your fault that my marriage is over.’
‘I remember saying, ‘You are in a Screwfix car park sh*****g my wife and it’s my fault your marriage is over?’’ Harper said.
He admitted using his phone to take photographs and that he also made a derogatory comment about Mr McLullich’s penis.
‘He did not like it and flew into a rage and came at me again and punched me a couple of times to the face and she got between us and stopped it,’ Harper added.
He said he initially became suspicious about the pair, around November 2020, when he claimed his wife’s attitude towards him changed.
He said he later noticed his wife’s car phone call history had ‘lots of calls’ from Mr McLullich.
But she denied anything was going on and told Haper that Mr McLullich was simply her mentor at work and was helping her through her police sergeant’s exam.
Harper told the court: ‘I knew something was going on but I couldn’t prove it. I would repeatedly ask her and she said, ‘it’s in your head, it’s in your head’ and ‘I was unhinged.’’
Harper said he decided to activate the microphone on the vehicle tracker and move it from the boot to underneath the driver’s seat so he could listen in real-time from an app on his phone.
He said one conversation between the pair confirmed his suspicions.
Harper is accused of stalking his estranged wife as he bugged her car, took her phone, hacked into her social media and downloaded her Snapchat history
Harper said: ‘They were talking about a previous night shift when they had met up and they had some sort of sexual activity, and they were laughing about who was going to sit in the wet patch of the police car.
‘I was upset. I now knew something was going on but I didn’t have anything concrete to say anything to her because she would just deny it.’
He went on to download her Snapchat phone history on to his device and discovered an ‘absolutely massive amount’ of messages between the pair, he said.
Harper said he also used his ex-wife’s phone to call Mr McLullich.
The defendant said: ‘He said, ‘hi gorgeous’ and I said, ‘it’s Gav, Steph’s husband’. There was then a pause and then ‘oh shit’.
‘He begged me not to tell the police and not to inform them what had been going on. He implied he and Steph would lose their jobs.
‘He begged me not to tell his wife and not to spoil his children’s Christmas.’
Harper said Mr McLullich denied he had slept with Ms Glynn but admitted there were ‘inappropriate messages and videos and he agreed they were disgusting’.
Harper, a father-of-two, of Liscard, Wirral, denies unlawful wounding and two stalking offences during a two-month campaign in which he allegedly twice put a tracker in Ms Glynn’s car, took her phone and hacked into her social media and downloaded her Snapchat history.
The defendant, a former soldier, who was in the King’s Regiment and then the Royal Military police before joining Merseyside police, told how he was badly affected when he was sacked from the Force in April 2015.
The jury heard he was dismissed for gross misconduct after he failed to investigate a shop lifting allegation and provided false information to the complainant and his supervisors.
A tribunal found he did not accept personal responsibility and sought to blame others in and outside the police force.
Harper said that the dismissal affected him badly leaving him in a ‘very dark place’ suffering from depression.
He said he and Ms Glynn, who married in 2018, were together for 10 years and ‘she was my best friend.’
Photographs of both Harper and Mr McLullich with facial injuries have been shown to the jury.
Mr McLullich needed six stitches to the head and told the court Harper hit him over the head with a torch during the confrontation.
Ms Glynn claimed Harper could have inflicted the injuries on himself.
Yesterday Harper using the torch or attacking himself.
Asked by Ms Payne about the stalking allegations he explained that both his and his wife’s car had trackers fitted and claimed she knew they were there in case the vehicles were stolen. However, he accepted he had moved one inside her car and bugged it as he wanted proof about what was going on. He denied his behaviour was ‘obsessive or intrusive.’
Harper said he made a complaint to police about the couple having sex on duty but they ‘were not interested at all’ and the following day he withdrew the complaint.
The case continues.