DCI Greg Wood of Essex Police gave a statement after security guard Gavin Plumb, 37, was been found guilty of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder TV presenter Holly Willoughby. He described Gavin Plumb as a 'dangerous and predatory' individual.
LISTEN:In the pre-internet age, it might never have occurred to Gavin Plumb to try to recruit accomplices for his depraved kidnap and rape plot.But with a swipe of his smartphone, and without having to even verify a telephone number or email address, the security guard could access hundreds of like-minded individuals who shared his sick appetites.
Plumb's hunting ground of choice when attempting to assemble a 'crew' to put his plan to snatch Ms Willoughby into motion was a messaging app named Kik. Depraved messages he exchanged online about television presenters from Irish stations RTE and TV3 mirrored the conversations he would have with Plumb almost ten years later.
A police source confirmed the Irish Garda was investigating Mulligan, but he has not appeared before a court. On the surface, Kik, which was founded by a group of Canadian students in 2009, appears to have been an odd choice for Plumb to have used for his obsessive kidnap-gang recruitment drive.Unlike platforms commonly used by criminals such as Telegram, Kik does not offer end-to-end encryption – a system which means no third parties or law enforcement can access messages.
Plumb's remarkably calm demeanour during cross-examination tallies with this notion that, thanks to a mindset warped by years of inhabiting the darker corners of the web, he saw nothing wrong with the vile language he used to discuss women. This prompted a colleague in the press bench to note: 'He doesn't even realise this isn't normal. He doesn't know what normal is.'
Plumb's vile correspondence only came to light thanks to an undercover US police officer, known as David Nelson, who infiltrated a disturbing chatroom about kidnapping love interests named 'Abduct Lovers'. Just minutes after a reporter joined the Holly Willoughby Fans group, a user named Dave Brownz posted a Photoshopped pornographic image of the former This Morning presenter next to Spice Girl Emma Bunton.
The combination of minimal verification checks, easy access to illicit chatrooms and this policy of removing unwanted members has created a culture that emboldens sexual predators. In April, 26-year-old Stuart Evans, from Wrexham, was given an 18-month jail term suspended for two years after demanding sex from an undercover police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl on Kik.
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