Jail for mistress who waged Fatal Attraction campaign of terror at her former lover
AN obsessed mistress who launched a 16-month terror campaign against her businessman lover in an attempt to force him to leave his wife was jailed yesterday.
Care-home entrepreneur Yvonne Graham, 45, bombarded company boss Andrew Nelson, 55, and his wife Lorraine with anonymous letters and text messages exposing their illicit affair.
Graham – likened to Glenn Close’s “bunny boiler” character in the 1987 film Fatal Attraction in which she cooked a family’s pet rabbit – put up posters falsely branding Mr Nelson a paedophile in an attempt to force the couple to split.
The married mother of two sent chilling letters to Mr Nelson’s 52-year-old wife asking: “Where do you think he is when you are working?,” a court was told.
She also sent letters to Mr Nelson’s son, his 85-year-old mother, neighbours, dentist, business associates, a school and a golf club where he had been a member since 1974.
She produced a second poster of her lover comparing him to a convicted sex offender before sending letters claiming that he was a thief and threatening to set fire to his timber importing business and kill him.
Graham even sent messages telling people to “wave” at Mrs Nelson because she indulged in orgies. The campaign left the couple unable to face neighbours and friends and Mr Nelson contemplating suicide.
Graham was jailed for 18 months yesterday at Hull Crown Court. Recorder Simon Jackson said she had embarked on an appalling campaign of harassment. She had tried to destabilise his family so that he would leave his wife. The recorder added: “It was monstrous.”
Richard Thompson, prosecuting said Graham, who is married with daughters aged 11 and 17, met greyhaired Mr Nelson in 2011.
She told him that she was separated from her husband and they Tormented… businessman Andrew Nelson and wife Lorraine with their children began an affair. Their spouses found out the following year but it continued. Graham began sending letters to the couple’s £400,000 home in Hornsea, East Yorkshire.
Mr Thompson said: “The correspondence was framed as if a third party were follow- ing the couple.
“It included statements like: ‘Let’s hope your kids don’t find out,’ ‘I have not had this much fun in a long time.’ ‘He has been...betraying you. I am on to them. Don’t worry’.”
She named herself as the person he was seeing. The harassment escalated with a note threatening an arson attack on his business.
It said: “You would not want a fire to start, would you?” He also received a threat to kill him and break his legs. The messages were so serious that police installed a panic alarm at the Nelsons’ home in 2014.
The following May police spoke to Graham but she denied being involved, claiming that she was also being targeted. Officers finally arrested Graham in September 2015 after hand-writing samples provided a match.
But Mr Nelson was twice told by Humberside Police that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.
It was only when he put up £5,000 for a private prosecution that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service took over the case.
Graham, who employs 140 people as co-owner of eight care homes called Fox Glove Care, pleaded guilty to harassment.
Charges of making threats to kill, arson and perverting the course of justice were left on file.
In a victim impact statement, Mr Nelson said: “I had to knock on people’s doors asking if they had received letters.
“I cannot put into words how difficult that was. I contemplated taking my own life. We lived like hermits.”
His wife said she could not eat or sleep and was forced to change her car after a letter was circulated saying that she was involved in group sex romps.
Graham was also put under an indefinite restraining order and was told to pay Mr Nelson £5,000 plus £1,500 court costs. The Nelsons declined to comment last night.