[2025] EWCA Crim 1461

We shall now say a little bit more about the facts. It is not necessary for our purposes to go into the facts in the same detail that the judge did after the trial. His sentencing remarks are in the public domain, and the trial itself received a great deal of publicity. What happened is well known. It is, though, important to record that the count of soliciting to murder was left specifically to the jury on the basis that they could only convict of it if they were sure that the applicant intended that Holly Willoughby would be murdered. The intention that the offences there mentioned would actually be carried out is a necessary part of the statutory offences in counts 2 and 3. The sentences were therefore imposed on the basis that the applicant intended all of that offending to take place, and specifically intended the murder, using the knives which he had acquired, of Holly Willoughby.

Plainly, that behaviour arose out of an obsession which the applicant had formed for her. It is important to note that the applicant's personal circumstances would have made it very difficult for him to carry out these offences. He appears to have been substantially immobile, perhaps due to obesity. He is not in good health. He cannot drive and does not have a car. Nor does he have access to the sort of property which might serve as a temporary prison in which a kidnapped victim could be held, raped and murdered.

However, the applicant attempted to overcome those handicaps and obstacles in his path by recruiting other people to help him. It was precisely because he was not able to carry out such acts on his own that he needed help. Occasionally he said that he would carry the plan out on his own, but the judge said that that was simply bravado. The judge said that the applicant intended to carry out the plan if he could find the right "crew" to help him to do so.

It seems that the applicant's obsession dated back to 2018. After long and (to the applicant) disappointing conversations with Marc, Ryan and others, he finally found (he thought) "David Nelson" who, in 2023, expressed a desire to travel to the United Kingdom from the United States of America to help him to carry out this plan.

The judge was particularly concerned to point out that during these exchanges with "David Nelson", the applicant suggested that he had another potential victim available on whom they could practise. He further suggested that his own son (then aged 15) was interested in taking part. In the interests of that young person, it is essential to make it entirely clear that the police investigated that assertion and found that there was nothing whatever to suggest that this boy was in fact interested in playing any part in furthering his father's depraved schemes.

The conduct came to light because "David Nelson" is an American Law Enforcement Agent. He was so concerned by the conversations that he was having with the applicant that he urgently drew then to the attention of the relevant police force in the United Kingdom, who themselves urgently took steps to apprehend the applicant.

It is not necessary for us to set out any detail of those conversations or of the earlier conversations which the applicant had with other people. They were horrifying and contained graphic detail of what the applicant proposed to do to Holly Willoughby. They are distressing even for seasoned professionals to read.

The offending has a further and important background, as the judge recorded. We have mentioned already in passing the previous convictions of the applicant, who is now 38 years old. In 2006, when he was aged 19, he approached a woman on the Stansted Express train. He gave her a note saying that he had a gun and that she should get off at the next station, otherwise he would shoot her and everyone else on the train and himself. Other passengers intervened because they saw that she was distressed. The applicant then got off the train. Two days later, he made a similar approach to another woman on the same railway line. This time he said that he was a police officer and that she should get off the train at the next stop. She refused to do so. Eventually, the applicant was arrested. He was found to be in possession of an imitation firearm and three rope ligatures. He pleaded guilty to two offences of attempted kidnapping and was sentenced to 12 months' custody, suspended for two years with supervision and activity requirements. It need hardly be said that that sentencing took account of two factors which would have been of significance then: first, he was only 19 years old; and secondly, he had no relevant previous convictions. That was an opportunity to disrupt the behaviour which was, in the result, unsuccessful. In 2008, when he was aged 21, the applicant approached two girls who worked with him at the Woolworths store in Harlow. He had with him a box cutter and a type of Stanley knife and he told them to go into the back of the stock room. He bound the hands of one of the girls, but the other was able to escape and raise the alarm. He was arrested. He pleaded guilty to two offences of false imprisonment in June 2009 and was sentenced to 32 months' imprisonment.

Those previous convictions, given the circumstances of the present offending, were gravely concerning.