Holly Willoughby kidnap plot trial: Moment Gavin Plumb is arrested shown in court

Published

1 year ago

June 28, 2024

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A security guard told police Holly Willoughby “is a fantasy of mine” when he was arrested for plotting to kidnap the television presenter, in footage played in court.

Giving evidence for the first time on Friday, Gavin Plumb, 37, said Willoughby, 43, was “my celebrity crush” but insisted he never intended to act on his alleged plans.

In footage played at Chelmsford Crown Court, police are seen smashing through the front door of his home in Harlow, Essex, on 4 October last year, before a topless Plumb asks: “What the hell is going on?”

Stood in his bedroom, he is open mouthed as he is handcuffed, before an officer explains he is being arrested over an alleged conspiracy to kidnap the former This Morning host Willoughby while he is sat on his bed.

“I’m not gonna lie. She is a fantasy of mine,” he says. “She’s a fantasy of a lot of guys I expect.”

Prosecutors say Plumb was obsessed with Willoughby – who stepped down from the ITV show in October last year after 14 years – and planned to abduct, repeatedly rape and murder her.

An undercover US police officer, using the name David Nelson, on Thursday told jurors he believed Plumb posed an “imminent threat” to the presenter, who hosted Dancing On Ice earlier this year.

Plumb shared a video of his “kidnap kit” with the officer and said he would use chloroform to snatch Willoughby from her home to sexually assault her before slitting her throat, the jury has heard.

The officer alerted UK police who found two bottles of liquid, alongside items including handcuffs, rope, shackles and cable ties, at Plumb’s home – but they were found not to contain the substance.

Further footage played in court shows Plumb being held in a police station holding area wearing a dark green T-shirt as officers searched his home as he says: “I can pretty much guess what they’re looking for.”

Plumb denies three charges of soliciting murder and encouraging kidnap and rape between 21 December 2021 and 5 October last year.

Giving evidence for the first time on Friday, he told the jury he spent his life online engaging in “wholesome chat” but also fantasising about having sex with celebrities, including Willoughby, whom he had seen on daytime TV after he became housebound, having gained weight and reaching 35.5 stone.

“She was my celebrity crush,” said Plumb, who sat down in a chair to give his evidence, wearing a light grey sweater and dark trousers, after telling the judge he would not be able to stand.

Asked how many times he thought about her a day, Plumb said: “It would depend how many times I would chat about her. Some days it would be once, other days it would be four, five, six times.”

But the chats became “darker” from 2021, he said, being questioned by his barrister Sasha Wass KC.

Plumb told jurors he was “sorry” for the contents, adding: “I’m absolutely heartbroken, disgusted and shocked that it has come out.”

‘Kidnap kit’

He admitted he found the conversations “exciting” at the time but added: “Looking back at it now it’s massively regrettable because it’s not the sort of chat I would normally participate in.”

Plumb added: “It was kind of like gratification. It was something I knew was never going to happen.”

He told the jury he had bought most of the items, in what has been described as a “kidnap kit”, following a four-month sexual relationship in which he was introduced to “BDSM and rough sex”, while the chloroform was to clean a “large stain next to my fridge”.

Plumb told jurors his weight started to fluctuate from the age of 13, which “really affected my mental health” because he could not play sport and was often put “in the friend zone” with girls.

Attempted double-kidnap

The defendant said he has only had one serious relationship, which he described as “extremely toxic”, and lasted four-and-a-half years, during which there were “constant arguments” and he was “constantly put down”.

“I don’t want to be in a relationship anymore,” he said.

The court has heard he has two convictions for attempted kidnap from 2006, after trying to abduct two women off the Stansted Express train, later claiming they were members of cabin crew. He had rope and an imitation firearm when he was arrested.

Plumb said he was wearing a uniform and travelling between car parks where he worked handing out tickets and although he admitted he “had a stewardess fantasy back then” he said he did it “to get out of the relationship” and it was a “cry for help”.

He was handed a suspended sentence and in 2008 said he used a box cutter to hold two “shouting and screaming and crying” 16-year-old girls in a warehouse where he worked, taping one of their hands behind her back.

Plumb said he committed the offences to “get away from the relationship”, which ended while he was in jail after he was sentenced to 32 months in prison, serving half, after admitting two charges of false imprisonment.

‘Normal fantasy chat’

He told jurors once released he spent 99.9% of his life online, communicating with others about gaming, football and “normal fantasy chat” but it was “completely different” to the “dark” material he later shared.

Plumb said chats about him keeping Willoughby in a “dungeon” were “nothing more than talking”, adding: “It was a rush of excitement as I knew it was online chat to get my gratification and move on”.

He denied encouraging an online contact called Marc, who is believed to be based in Ireland, to kidnap or rape Willoughby, saying he never expected him or the undercover officer, whom he thought was in New York, to come to the UK.

“I knew it was never going to be anything more than a fantasy,” he said, telling jurors he never acted on any of the alleged plans.

The court heard Plumb has no driving licence or access to a car and so said he wouldn’t have been able to get to her house, while his weight at the time – up to 30 stone – meant he would be more likely to trip over a small step than scale the high boundary wall.

‘Violent, graphic descriptions’

But prosecutor Alison Morgan KC read out some of the explicit and degrading messages and suggested: “These are violent, graphic descriptions of what you are going to do to Holly Willoughby.”

“No, because it’s not going to happen,” Plumb replied.

The trial continues.

UK

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Published

57 mins ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Liverpool players past and present have joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva for their funeral in Portugal.

A service was held in the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto in northern Portugal on Saturday morning.

Mourners lined the streets and some in the crowd clapped as the brothers’ coffins were carried into the church.

The funeral – in pictures

Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.

His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.

Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.

Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.

Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.

Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.

‘More than a friend’

In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”

Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”

Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.

‘With us forever’

Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.

“Their spirit will be with us forever.”

The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.

He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.

“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”

The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.

No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.

Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.

Flowers have been left outside Anfield, where flags have been lowered to half-mast and all club shops, museums and tours have been closed until Monday.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

4 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

5 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.