Man who plotted murder of Willoughby had millions of images of women, jury told

Millions of images of women were discovered on the devices of aman accused of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder TV presenter Holly Willoughby, a court has heard.

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

Detective Constable William Belsham said the amount of material was so vast that officers were only able to examine around 10 per cent of the images collected by “obsessed” security guard Gavin Plumb. Police carried out a filtering exercise before trawling through tens of thousands of pictures on his devices. In total, 10,322 were of Ms Willoughby, jurors were told.

The 37-year-old also revealed he had been “wanting to rape” the former This Morning presenter for three years, in hundreds of “sexualised” messages shown to the jury at Chelmsford Crown Court on Tuesday.

The trial heard how Plumb discussed his plans to attack Ms Willoughby, 43, in detail with an online user called “Marc”. The pair scoped access points to her house, shared screenshots of the property and said they would be “masked up” for an attack, in scores of messages shared on WhatsApp, Kik and Wickr.