Survivor tells how Holly Willoughby stalker Gavin Plumb tried to kidnap her off a train in an isolated village

A flight attendant has told of her horror when Gavin Plumb, who has been jailed for his plot to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby, tried to abduct her off a train.

Plumb, 37, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday after being found guilty of soliciting murder and inciting rape and kidnap the presenter following a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.

An airline worker said she encountered Plumb when he sat opposite him as she tried to do her makeup on a train to work in 2006.

She told the BBC: “He passed me a note. I thought it’s just some piece of paper. I didn’t even look what he was doing. I ignored it.

“Then he pushed it forward for me to read and when I read it, it was something along the lines of ‘get off the train with me, be quiet, don’t do anything, get off the train with me and nothing will happen to anybody’.”

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She added: “He had a rope and replica gun on him. As I read that note it was only then I looked at him. My first impression was that: he is huge, I have no chance.

“There was this moment when I was frozen and scared. But it was also disbelief, I thought maybe he is joking, it is absurd, but he started approaching me with his hands, he held his hand on my knee and he was indicating that ‘we are going to go’.

“After the initial freeze and disbelief I realised what’s going on and I was frightened, that feeling was growing because I started realising that this massive man wants to get me off the train and I knew the next station is in a small village.”

Plumb’s victim added: “I had all the worst scenarios cooking in my head. And I thought if I get off that train, he can do anything and so my thought was not to get off that train at any cost.”

Both she and a second survivor were wearing uniforms from the airline they worked at. Gavin Plumb later told a court he had an “air stewardess fantasy”.

Plumb, who is now 37, received a suspended sentence for the attempted kidnaps.

Two years later he terrified two 16-year-old girls when he tied their wrists up and forced them into the store room of a shop.

Asked if she felt a prison sentence could have prevented future attacks, the woman told the BBC: “I believe so, I believe that lack of punishment was only encouragement.

“He could go unpunished doing whatever he did, if he got away with it – why not try again?”

She continued: “Potentially every man can be a perpetrator and I understand that so many women think along the same lines. A large man sitting right next to a girl: that is a potential danger.

“It is really sad but that is one of those takeaways from that unfortunate story for me.

“When I look at men I very often do that quick judgement, what level of danger are they?”

On his latest victim she added: “I do feel for Holly because obviously she had to go through it in the spotlight, it must be difficult.

“You do not want your name to be attached to a person like Gavin Plumb and this is one reason I want to remain anonymous. I do not want to be associated with him in any way.”

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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 his trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Asked what she now thought of her past attacker, the airline worker told the BBC: “I feel like he lost his life, anybody has capacity to have a wonderful life ahead of them.

“He has in my eyes, he has nothing in life. It makes him in a way more dangerous, you know a person who has nothing to lose.

“No ability to control himself. I almost feel pity for him.”