A security guard has lost a challenge against his sentence for plotting to kidnap, rape and murder TV presenter Holly Willoughby.
Gavin Plumb was jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years in July last year after being unanimously convicted of soliciting murder and encouraging or assisting others to rape and kidnap.
Plumb was branded a significant danger to women, who caused fear and shock in the former Good Morning Britain presenter.
On Tuesday he sought to appeal against his sentence at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
Reading out the Court of Appeal’s judgment, Justice Edis said that having considered the case with “anxious care”, along with Mr Justice Martin Spencer and Ms Justice Norton, they rejected the appeal.
Refusing the application, Lord Justice Edis told the court that the offences were “so serious” that a life sentence was justified.
“They were horrifying and contained graphic detail of what the applicant proposed to do to Holly Willoughby.”
He continued: “They are distressing, even for seasoned professionals, to read.”
Sitting with, Justice Edis added: “The harm which was intended was of the highest and gravest possible kind.”
The judge said the sentence was “designed to reflect the totality of the criminality”.
He told the court: “That is to say, a long period of time during which a significant number of people were prevailed upon in the hope that they would prospectively, along with the applicant, kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby.”
He continued: “Plainly that behaviour arose out of an obsession that he had formed with her.”
He added: “It is important to note that the applicant’s personal circumstances would have made it very difficult for him to carry out these offences.
“He appears to have been substantially immobile, perhaps due to obesity.
“He is not in good health, he cannot drive and does not have a car, he does not have access to the sort of property that might serve as a temporary prison during which a kidnap victim could be held, raped and murdered.”
Earlier Alison Morgan KC, for the Crown Prosecution Service, defended the trial judge’s sentence.
She said: “What else was the judge to do but conclude that the risk posed by this applicant from the facts of the offending and previous convictions could not be met with anything other than a life sentence?”
Ms Morgan continued that the harm intended by Plumb was “of the very highest level”.
She said: “These were life-changing events given the magnitude of this offending and the impact on Ms Willoughby as a result.”
Sasha Wass KC for Plumb told the court her client was attempting to appeal against the sentence which she described as “manifestly excessive”.
Ms Wass said: “None of the actual facts of this case were really in dispute, that is to say, the messages between Mr Plumb himself and those with whom he was corresponding.
“The issue at trial was first, his intention as to how serious he was about carrying out what he said he wanted to do, and secondly, the viability of what he said he wanted to do.”
She said the obese offender’s plan was “hopelessly unrealistic” because he could not drive and was not physically fit enough.
Ms Wass said: “The chances of success of Mr Plumb’s plan were truly limited, if not non-existent.”
A trial at Chelmsford Crown Court heard that Essex Police found bottles of chloroform and an “abduction kit” complete with cable ties when officers raided the Plumb’s flat in Harlow.
Jurors also heard that his kidnap plans involved attempting to “ambush” the star at her family home, even discussing taking time off work to organise the attack.
Plumb, 38, had argued in his defence that it was just online chat and fantasy.
Sentencing him, Mr Justice Edward Murray said he had no doubt the former security guard would have put his plan into action if he had found an accomplice.
He said Plumb had also planned to attack Holly’s husband Dan Baldwin and their children.
Justice Murray praised the TV host’s “considerable courage”.
And he told the morbidly obese father-of-two Plumb: “I find that you are dangerous.”
Mr Justice Murray described some of Plumb’s plans as “particularly sadistic, brutal and degrading”, and said he had “no doubt that this was all considerably more than a fantasy”.
He had previously been convicted of attacking four women in 2006 and 2008, and spent 31 months in prison.
Plumb was days from carrying out his attack when he shared his plans in an online chat with an undercover US officer.
He claimed he had found an abandoned farm to imprison Holly, and had 10,322 photos of the Dancing on Ice host on his phone.
Plumb was snared after a US undercover police officer from the Owatonna Police Department in the US state of Minnesota infiltrated an online group called Abduct Lovers.
The sexual predator told the officer, who used 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.
If you’ve been the victim of sexual assault, you can access help and resources via www.rapecrisis.org.uk or calling the national telephone helpline on 0808 802 9999
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