{"id":136974,"date":"2025-10-21T22:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T22:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/136974\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T22:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T22:37:11","slug":"security-guard-in-sentence-appeal-bid-over-holly-willoughby-rape-and-murder-plot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/136974\/","title":{"rendered":"Security guard in sentence appeal bid over Holly Willoughby rape and murder plot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gavin Plumb was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 16 years in July last year after being unanimously convicted of soliciting murder and encouraging or assisting others to rape and kidnap.<\/p>\n

A trial at Chelmsford Crown Court heard that Essex Police found bottles of chloroform and an \u201cabduction kit\u201d complete with cable ties when officers raided the 38-year-old\u2019s flat in Harlow.<\/p>\n

Jurors also heard that Plumb\u2019s kidnap plans involved attempting to \u201cambush\u201d Ms Willoughby at her family home, even discussing taking time off work to organise the attack.<\/p>\n

Plumb had argued in his defence that it was just online chat and fantasy.<\/p>\n

Sentencing him, Mr Justice Murray described some of Plumb\u2019s plans as \u201cparticularly sadistic, brutal and degrading\u201d, and said he had \u201cno doubt that this was all considerably more than a fantasy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Holly<\/p>\n

Holly Willoughby \u2018made every effort to avoid attention being drawn to herself in this matter\u2019, prosecutors said (Ian West\/PA)<\/p>\n

Plumb is now seeking to appeal against his sentence, with the challenge set to be heard by Lord Justice Edis, Mr Justice Martin Spencer and Ms Justice Norton at the Royal Courts of Justice in London at 10.30am on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

He was snared after a US undercover police officer from the Owatonna Police Department in the US state of Minnesota infiltrated an online group called Abduct Lovers.<\/p>\n

Plumb told the officer, who used the pseudonym David Nelson, that he was \u201cdefinitely serious\u201d about his plot to kidnap Ms Willoughby, leaving the officer with the impression that there was an \u201cimminent threat\u201d to her.<\/p>\n

The officer became so concerned about Plumb\u2019s posts that evidence was passed to the FBI, with US law enforcement then contacting police in the UK.<\/p>\n

\"Gavin<\/p>\n

Gavin Plumb was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 16 years in July last year (Essex Police\/PA)<\/p>\n

News in 90 Seconds – October 21st<\/p>\n

When he was arrested on October 4, 2023, and officers told him that the allegations concerned Ms Willoughby, the defendant told them: \u201cI\u2019m not gonna lie, she is a fantasy of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the sentencing hearing, prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said the offences had had a \u201ccatastrophic impact\u201d on Ms Willoughby, stating: \u201cThe extent of the shock and fear caused by this offending has been impossible to convey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dancing On Ice host, who asked for her victim personal statement to be private, waived her right to anonymity in connection with the charge against Plumb of assisting or encouraging rape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gavin Plumb was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 16 years in July last year after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,13131,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-136974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-holly-willoughby","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}