Stalker jailed over online tale of rape and murder

Published on Friday 3 September 2010 16:06

A STALKER was jailed after writing an online story about raping and murdering a woman he had been harassing in real life for two years.

Greg Downing, 40, detailed the imagined attack on children's author Katharine Quarmby in an online novel.

He had bombarded Ms Quarmby, from London, with phone calls and e-mails since they met through an online dating site in 2008, Blackfriars Crown Court, in London, heard.

He was convicted of stalking her on three separate occasions before she found the blog online after typing her name into the internet search engine Google.

The 29-page piece, titled "A Novel: Katharine Quarmby", is about a man stalking the writer, burgling her home, raping and finally murdering her.

Judge Deva Pillay sentenced Downing, of Crowborough, East Sussex, to six months in jail.

He said: "This can only be described as a campaign of harassment.

"It is clear that your harassment of Miss Quarmby has been deliberate and premeditated so as to cause her and her family the maximum discomfort, embarrassment and fear."

The pair met using the online dating service on the Guardian newspaper's website but later split. A short time later, the writer, who was nominated for the Orange Prize for short story fiction for her book Fussy Freya in 2005, reported Downing to the police after he plagued her with text messages, calls and e-mails.

In January this year, he appeared in court again after getting in touch with Ms Quarmby and breaching his order. Shortly afterwards, Ms Quarmby found the blog.