Doll house stalker’s 50-year obsession
Infatuated bachelor, 62, tracked down schoolfriend
A LIFELONG bachelor who lives with nine life-size dolls began stalking a female school friend almost 50 years after they parted because he ‘never got over’ her, a court heard.
Everard Cunion, 62, decided to get back in touch with Julie Taylor, also 62, earlier this year after losing his job made him re-evaluate his life.
Having not seen her since the day they left school in 1972, he researched birth, death and marriage registers to track her down. Cunion even turned up at her old family home, where her 88-year-old mother, Georgina Allen, still lived.
Although he was asked to leave, he went on to send eight letters addressed to Mrs Taylor to her mother’s home, Poole magistrates heard. He also went jogging past the house every day for four months.
Mrs Taylor did not respond to his letters but she and her mother became concerned when Cunion made a joke about kidnapping her in one and she reported the software engineer to the police.
Cunion admitted stalking Mrs Taylor, from Christchurch, Dorset, and harassing her mother.
Magistrates sentenced him to 120 hours of unpaid work and ten rehabilitation days, as well as a five-year restraining order that prevents him from contacting Mrs Taylor or her mother.
In 2007 Cunion invited journalists into his home to show off his collection of nine life-size dolls, which cost £5,000 each. He gives them names and describes one, ‘Eleanor’, as his daughter.
He said at the time: ‘I evaluated my life and figured that I wanted an artificial woman, seeing as I couldn’t seem to get a real one.
‘You can’t help but treat them as if they are at least partly real.’
Cunion’s unrequited love for Mrs Taylor began when he went to school with her between 1968 and 1972, prosecutor Lee Turner told a previous hearing.
‘Cunion had an infatuation with her, which was not reciprocated,’ he said. They last saw each other on the last day of school in 1972.
‘He wrote a letter to her in the early 1970s but it didn’t reach her as her mother burnt it, and in 1978 she received a letter from him but disposed of it.’
He said Mrs Taylor’s mother recognised Cunion when he called at her house and shut the door. The letters he subsequently sent ‘started off short and over time became lengthier and more rambled’, said Mr Turner.
Speaking after an earlier court appearance, Cunion, from Christchurch, said he felt ‘stupid’ over the matter. ‘I upset her [Mrs Taylor] when I was at school and it’s haunted me for 50 years,’ he said. ‘I was determined to try to find out if she was OK but clearly I alarmed her. I wanted to find a way of making it up to her.
‘Girls have to be able to reject guys they don’t want and those guys have to accept that. For some reason I have not been able to.’