UPDATE

AS OF JANUARY 1, 2013 - POSTING ON THIS BLOG WILL NO LONGER BE 'DAILY'. SWITCHING TO 'OCCASIONAL' POSTING.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Online Novel Gets Jail for Stalker/ Writer

A stalker wrote a blog about raping and murdering a woman he had been harassing in real life for two years.

Greg Downing detailed the imagined attack on children's author Katharine Quarmby in an online novel.

He bombarded Ms Quarmby with phone calls and emails since they met through an online dating site in 2008.

Yesterday the 40-year-old was jailed for six months for putting a person in fear of violence after he admitted what a judge described as a “campaign of harassment.”

Blackfriars Crown Court, in London, was told Ms Quarmby stumbled upon the blog after Downing, of Beacon Road, Crowborough, was convicted three times of stalking her.

She typed her name into the internet search engine Google and found a 29-page piece titled A Novel: Katharine Quarmby, About a Man Stalking the Writer, Burgling her Home, Raping and Finally Murdering Her.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sick. Really. This reminds me of a cyberpath that I know of. At one time he belonged to this online forum I was on. He would write these long “stories” and post them on the forum. Which featured me in real life places, times, clothing and so on combined with flat out lies. Slightly changing my name “Fay” instead of “May” or using my middle name as a first name.

As if that were not enough he created an additional screen name for the forum posing as a female with a female sounding screen name “Daisygirl” and then proceeded to comment on his own stories and posts. For example after he wrote a story or said anything on the forum within a day or so would login as “Daisygirl” he would write, “ooohh you are such passionate writer and a down right good man, women must be crazy to leave you” or “than you for all you do. Too bad more men are not as giving of the self as you”- the “Daisygirl” screen name would always come in a support whatever it was he was saying.

This went on for months. The Creator and Admin of the forum knew about his antics and let him continue to make an ass out of himself. Then finally the day came when he logged in as himself and reported; sadly that “Daisygirl” had died. Saying he was sharing this with the forum because over the months he had become close with her and corresponded with her online and over the phone.