Stalker, 85, hounded terrified woman
A WOMAN was hounded by an elderly stalker with a four-year infatuation with her.
Michael Moss, 85, forced his way into his ‘horrified’ victim’s home at the climax to an harassment campaign.
The pregnant woman, who was happily married with a school-age son, was forced to flee her address in south Manchester through the back garden in April this year, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Moss, a retired chartered accountant of Wilmslow Park North, Wilmslow, met and fell for the woman in 2013 while his wife, who has since died, was being treated for dementia.
A sentencing judge told the pensioner: “I can only think you have suffered some form of reaction to your wife’s illness and subsequent death after so many years of marriage, which has affected and warped your thinking.”
The court heard how, over time Moss convinced himself the woman, in her thirties, shared his feelings.
After a year of small talk he told her he wanted to speak about their ‘future together’, before bizarrely claiming she had promised to leave her husband for him.
Moss later turned up at her work with a letter for her and quizzed colleagues about where she lived.
They didn’t tell him – so he found her address using the electoral roll and researched her family history using Ancestry.com.
In April, Moss turned up at her home. She asked neighbours to ‘get rid of him’ and called the police.
Moss has now been sentenced after admitting stalking at Manchester Crown Court. The victim said his ‘insinuations’ had left her ‘feeling sick’ and described his thinking as ‘warped, scary and just horrible’.
Moss has now been banned from going near the victim by a restraining order.
Ordering him to serve a six-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, Judge Mansell said he would have ‘no hesitation’ in sending Moss down if he breached the restraining order.
The judge added: “I would not be at all surprised if you required some counselling to cope with your loneliness, grief and loss.”