The alarming search history of the man accused of hatching a plot to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby has been revealed in a court trial.
Shopping centre security Gavin Plumb, from Harlow, Essex, is currently on trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, where details of his alleged abduction plan have been disclosed.
It was previously reported during the trial that Plumb, 37, had planned on taking former This Morning star Willoughby, 43, to a ‘dungeon’ where her ‘screams can’t be heard for miles’.
On Tuesday June 25, the jury at the court heard that Plumb searched ‘how to meet people who plan to kidnap celebrities’ on September 11 2011, more than 10 years before his alleged scheme to kidnap Willoughby emerged.
Detective Constable William Belsham of Essex Police has been sworn in as a witness at the trial today, with Prosecutor Alison Morgan KC going through a document of communications before the jurors.
DC Belsham said that when Plumb was arrested, Plumb’s phone was seized and left unlocked, so that the police officers could go through the device, filming themselves going through some messages using body-worn cameras.
The detective constable explained that Plumb’s legal representatives later provided the PIN for the device, despite the suspect initially refusing to do so.
Plumb’s previous convictions included attempting to force two women to get off trains with him in 2006 under the threat of a gun.
Two years later, two 16-year-olds who were working at a shop in Essex were approached by Plumb, ordered to ‘get to the back of the stockroom’ and threatened with a knife.
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‘He then took some rope and tape out of his pocket and he tied the hands of one of [the] girls. As he did so, the other girl managed to escape and she managed to raise the alarm,’ prosecutor Ms Morgan KC previously told the court.