An undercover US police officer feared TV star Holly Willoughby was in “immediate danger” and faced an “imminent threat” from security guard Gavin Plumb, a jury heard.
The officer told Chelmsford Crown Court he had used the alias David Nelson for around three years in online forums where he investigated murder for hire, kidnap and human trafficking, when he encountered Plumb, 37, in a group called ‘Abduct Lovers’.
Giving evidence via video link from the US, he said Plumb – who denies plotting to kidnap, rape and murder the former This Morning presenter – then relayed details of an alleged plan to attack the star in a home invasion.
The officer, attached to the Owatonna Police Department in Minnesota, said he saw a message posted by Plumb in the group under the username “BigBear341987”, with a photo of Ms Willoughby as his profile picture.
“He identified that he had a “s***load” of information on her, that he knew when she got up in the morning as well as not having security cameras at her address,” he told the court.
“With him providing that information I felt that there was an imminent threat to this individual.”
The group on the Kik messenger app had up to 50 active members at any given time, where they discussed topics like abduction, rape and “murder of other individuals”. The officer noted it was rare for a user to claim to have substantial information about a target.
The officer then asked Plumb a series of open-ended questions to “gather information” about the alleged threat against Ms Willoughby in a private chat, the court heard.
Posing as David Nelson, he sent a picture of a fake ID card and a screenshot of a flight itinerary to build trust with the defendant by pretending he was willing to act as an accomplice, he said.
The officer said Plumb then sent a video of a “kidnap kit” laid out on his bed – featuring handcuffs, cable ties and other restraints.
“At that point in the conversation it was quite alarming,” the officer told the jury.
Plumb later sent him a separate picture of a bottle of chloroform, a liquid drug used to stupefy victims. Two bottles purporting to be chloroform discovered in Plumb’s bedroom were later found to be ethanol and water when they were tested in a laboratory after he purchased them from a homeopathic website.
During these conversations the undercover officer was passing information to the US authorities. He confirmed to prosecutor Alison Morgan KC that a meeting with FBI was held on 4 October and the intelligence was passed to the Metropolitan Police.
Under cross-examination from Sasha Wass KC, defending, it was revealed the officer wrote in his police report that he believed Ms Willoughby “may be in immediate danger of death”.
The officer also confirmed he wrote that he thought the star may be at risk of being raped or suffering bodily harm, the court heard.
At one point in the messages exchanged, he asked Plumb: “So you looking for help with this then?”
The officer told the court: “It was important to establish if this was a fantasy or if this was reality for BigBear at this point.”
Ms Wass KC also brought up the issue of the defendant’s weight after the officer asked Plumb to send him a selfie.
The officer confirmed Plumb had told him he proposed to “jump the outer wall” of Ms Willoughby’s property as he relayed details of the alleged attack to the officer.
“Now knowing what he looked like and the state of his dimensions, did that plan and what was said about the plan of jumping the outer walls, did that cause you to re-evaluate the credibility of that plan?” she asked the witness.
“No I didn’t,” the officer replied.
The defence barrister later suggested that Plumb weighed some 30 stone and had limited mobility when he was arrested on 4 October last year.
However another officer, detective constable William Belsham of Essex Police, insisted the defendant could “walk fine from the video I’ve seen”.
Details of Plumb’s previous convictions were also read to the jury in a series of agreed facts.
The court heard Plumb was handed a 12-month suspended sentence for attempting to kidnap two women from the Stansted Express in 2006.
He was later jailed for 32 months for another attack on two teenage girls in 2008, in which he threatened them with a “box-cutter/Stanley knife-type instrument”.
Junior prosecuting counsel Rosalind Earis said: “He told them to ‘Turn around and put your hands behind your back’. He pulled out some blue rope from his pocket but, finding it tangled, retrieved some tape from his pocket and taped up the hands of one of the girls behind her back.
“As he was doing that, the other girl ran off and both girls managed to escape and raise the alarm. The entire incident lasted between five and seven minutes. The girls described themselves as ‘shouting and screaming and crying’.”
The prosecution claims it was Plumb’s “ultimate fantasy” to target Ms Willoughby, who has waived her right to anonymity.
The shopping centre security guard is accused of soliciting the undercover US officer to join a plot to commit murder, and incitement to kidnap and rape the TV personality. Plumb, of Harlow in Essex, denies all the charges.
The trial, scheduled to last two weeks, continues.