A security guard faces jail for a plot to kidnap, rape and murder the TV presenter Holly Willoughby when he is sentenced on Friday.
Gavin Plumb, 37, was snared after a US undercover police officer infiltrated an online group called Abduct Lovers and became so concerned about Plumb’s posts that evidence was passed to the FBI.
US law enforcement in turn contacted police in the UK, and when Essex Police officers raided Plumb’s flat in Harlow they found bottles of chloroform and an “abduction kit” complete with cable ties.
Plumb wept after jurors unanimously convicted him of soliciting murder and inciting rape and kidnap following an earlier trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.
He is due to be sentenced at the same court on Friday.
Former This Morning presenter Ms Willoughby said after Plumb’s conviction last week that women “should not be made to feel unsafe … in our own homes”.
The trial was told that Plumb’s plans were foiled when a potential accomplice who he spoke to online turned out to be an undercover officer from the Owatonna Police Department in the US state of Minnesota.
Plumb told the officer, who was using the pseudonym David Nelson, that he was “definitely serious” about his plot to kidnap Ms Willoughby, leaving the officer with the impression that there was an “imminent threat” to her.
When Plumb was arrested on October 4 last year and officers told him that the allegations concerned Ms Willoughby, the defendant told them: “I’m not gonna lie, she is a fantasy of mine.”
The Dancing On Ice star waived her right to anonymity in connection with the charge against Plumb of assisting or encouraging rape.
Alleged victims of sex offences or targets of sex offence conspiracies have a right to automatic anonymity for life from the moment an allegation is made by them or anyone else.
Plumb’s kidnap plans involved attempting to “ambush” Ms Willoughby at her family home – even discussing taking time off work in order to organise the attack.
He told others he would then take the presenter to another location, which he suggested would be a “dungeon”-type room.
Prosecutors described Plumb’s plot as “carefully planned” – pointing to the items he had purchased and the lengths to which he had gone to find out when Ms Willoughby did not have security.
In her opening to the jury, prosecutor Alison Morgan KC told the court of his previous convictions for false imprisonment and attempted kidnap, saying that they showed he “knew what it would take to terrify and overpower a woman”.
Plumb had argued in his defence that it was just online chat and fantasy.
He is to be sentenced by judge Mr Justice Edward Murray.
