A morbidly obese security guard accused of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby today told a court his ‘stewardess fantasy’ once 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 his previous convictions, including his attempt to kidnap two women from separate trains in August 2006. At the time he was a teenager and, according to his evidence, in his only ‘serious’ relationship.
Defence barrister Sasha Wass KC asked her client what was ‘going through your mind’ when he handed the first air hostess a note threatening to shoot her.
He replied: ‘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.’
Gavin Plumb allegedly planned to chloroform the former This Morning presenter and her husband Dan Baldwin before taking her to a ‘dungeon’ that he described as ‘death row’
The defendant, of Harlow, Essex, sits in court accompanied by a custody officer earlier this week
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.
In November 2008, Plumb was working at a Woolworths in Harlow when he ordered two 16-year-old female colleagues who were busy restocking to ‘get to the back of the stockroom’.
Threatening them with a box cutter, he told them to turn around and put their hands behind their backs.
‘It was exactly the same as happened beforehand. I just needed a way out of the relationship,’ Plumb said this morning.
The security guard 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 replied. ‘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.
Plumb described his online ‘sexual fantasy chats as ‘wholesome chat, clean chat’ and said it was ‘nowhere like as dark as it is in the sequence of events’ evidence shown to jurors.
He added: ‘It was having sex with certain people, people who were brought up in chats and stuff like that. People from different chatrooms that were posted and then celebrities.’
Plumb said Ms Willoughby became his ‘celebrity crush’ and he would think of her up to six times a day.
Asked about conversations involving the presenter with someone called Josh, Plumb said: I’m just having a fantasy chat. I know it’s never going to be more than a fantasy.’
On his ‘ultimate fantasy’ of getting a crew to abduct her, he insisted he never got a crew together and never acted on any of it.
The 37-year-old kept hundreds of photos of Ms Willoughby on his phone, three of which were shown to the jury
Ms Wass said: ‘You didn’t have a driving licence, you didn’t have a car…how would you have got to Holly Willoughby’s house?’
‘I wouldn’t have,’ Plumb said.
Referring to the talk of climbing over a wall, he said he was 28-30 stone at the time of his arrest. He is 24.5 stone now.
Asked if he could have climbed over a wall he said: ‘I’ve got more chance of tripping over a step.’
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.
Questioned about his love life, 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 was ‘extremely toxic’
He added: ‘There were constant arguments. The things a couple were doing, having a normal relationship, we weren’t doing. We were constantly at each other.’
Plumb is accused of planning to rape Ms Willoughby before murdering her and then disposing her body in a lake
Jurors heard that Plumb assembled a ‘restraint kit’, which he filmed laid out on his bed
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.