Security guard’s alleged plot to kidnap Holly Willoughby was not ‘viable’ because he could not drive and was ‘too overweight to abseil over 9ft-high wall at star’s home’, lawyer tells court

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 today 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 sexual torture before her throat would be slit and her body thrown in a lake at night.

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.

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‘The prosecution suggests that when he spoke of keeping Holly Willoughby prisoner in his own flat while he and his Holly Willoughby fans had sex 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.’

The father-of-two’s defence ‘was clear’ from the moment police raided his ground floor flat in Harlow, Essex, Ms Wass said, as police bodycam footage showed him saying: ‘I’m not gonna lie. She’s a fantasy of mine.’

Ms Wass then repeated: ‘She’s a fantasy of mine. She’s a fantasy of a lot of guys, isn’t she?’ 

‘I think it’s indicative of the mindset of the prosecution in this case that you should put the worst interpretation on Mr Plumb’s words and behaviour.’ 

The 37-year-old defendant’s alleged co-conspirators ‘always’ had a reason they couldn’t take part in the plot, whether it was Covid or work getting in the way.

‘The fun, if that’s the right word in the context of this case, was the plan,’ Ms Wass said.

Accepting Plumb’s comments were ‘vile and misogynistic’, she told the jury: ‘I’m sure all of you were horrified when these messages were read out in court.

‘You may form the view that even to send such messages to other people should be a criminal offence.’

The legal position, she explained, was that it might be illegal to send grossly offensive or indecent or obscene or menacing messages, adding: ‘If he had been charged with that you might think he had no defence whatsoever. 

‘But the prosecution has decided to charge Mr Plumb with much more serious offences.

‘The defence case is that Mr Plumb was an isolated, lonely individual who lived out his fantasy online.

‘He had neither the means nor the opportunity to carry out any of the things he carried out in his chats.’

Ms Wass said the comments were instead the ‘ramblings of a sad, isolated fantasist’ and told jurors not to ‘hold Mr Plumb’s previous convictions against him’.

Ms Wass reminded them that her client had been attempted to kidnap two women from a train in 2006 and falsely imprisoned two 16-year-old girls who works with him at a Woolworth’s branch in 2008.

But she told Chelmsford Crown Court: ‘Mr Plumb’s age at the time, his personal circumstances at the time, the period that has passed since they took place and the fact he pleaded guilty are reasons it wouldn’t be right to hold his previous convictions against him.’

The barrister added her client had explained while giving evidence that the previous convictions were an attempt to escape an ‘extremely toxic’ relationship by being sent to jail.

The online chats contained ‘grotesque comments’ from distasteful people’, Ms Wass said.

But David Nelson, the undercover police officer who uncovered the alleged plot, assumed he was dealing with a ‘stalker’ when in fact all the information the defendant disclosed to him about Ms Willoughby, including her movements, security arrangements and layout of her property, were not ‘classified’.

Her client had not left Harlow ‘except to go to work or go to hospital’, she said.

‘They [Plumb’s comments] do not disclose Mr Plumb asking Mr Nelson to do any of the things set out in the indictment,’ Ms Wass added.

The trial continues.