Minds star’s brother made our lives hell
BY MICHAEL DRUMMOND reporters@dailyrecord.co.uk
A SIMPLE Minds superfan who was stalked by the brother of the band’s lead singer says her “horrible nightmare” is over at last.
Paul Kerr, brother of frontman Jim, threatened to murder John Fagan and drag his wife Julie to a police station by her hair in a row over the band’s new album.
Speaking tearfully after the verdict was given, Julie, 52, said the stalking and the trial had been horrific but she would remain a fan of the 80s band.
She said: “I am just so relieved, it is the end of a horrible nightmare.
“He has lied all the way through. I felt sick to my stomach.”
She and John have seen more than 350 Simple Minds gigs over 35 years.
Julie said she had already made plans to see them in Brighton next year and hoped to celebrate their wedding anniversary again at Jim’s Villa Angela hotel in Sicily.
She added: “Going to put this all behind us and move on.”
Problems began last year after the release of Simple Minds’ album, Walk Between Worlds.
Kerr, of Brighton, himself condemned it as “poor quality and pure s***” on Facebook.
But when John responded, saying it was a mistake to sack the drummer and keyboard player, and that he would not see them in concert, Kerr flipped.
He then began an 11-month campaign of stalking and harassment against the Fagans.
Kerr, 56, took photos from their Facebook pages and reposted them with abusive messages.
He used fake accounts,
UPSET Victim Julie at court yesterday including one in the name of his dead mother, to make false claims that John had raped a boy and to post other sexually abusive comments.
Kerr also threatened to go to the couple’s home in Canterbury to “cripple” John and drag Julie by her hair to a police station, the court was told.
Kerr claimed he was being subjected to a campaign of abuse by the couple. But when police did not arrest John, he told officers by email: “If you don’t arrest him by Sunday then I will murder him.”
In his defence, Kerr claimed it was the Fagans who had created the fake accounts and posted about themselves.
But the jury at Lewes Crown Court in Sussex found him guilty of two counts of stalking the Fagans and a charge of stalking his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Vanthof.
He carried out a campaign against Elizabeth between April and November 2018, contacting her at home and at the French university where she worked. Kerr was jailed for two years in Edinburgh in 1998 for starting a fire at the home of a business associate after a venture went sour. He was again jailed for two years in 2013 after being convicted of aggravated burglary, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and criminal damage. He will be sentenced for his latest crimes on January 6.