TV star’s tormentor told her he’d got so close he could smell her hair
A BBC news presenter yesterday told of her terrifying ordeal after a pensioner viewer stalked her for six years – and boasted he got close enough to smell her hair.
Alex Lovell, 45, was tormented by Gordon Hawthorn, 69, who was finally caught and jailed for two and a half years in January.
She was sent dozens of cards which were ‘innocent-looking and featuring fluffy animals’ but were filled with ‘filthy fantasies’. The Bristol-based BBC Points West host said she was left ‘jumpy’ and ‘looking over my shoulder constantly’.
She added: ‘The sender said he was close enough to smell my hair, described what he would do to me and how he’d raped many times before.’ He even signed off one message: ‘From your stalker and soon-to-be your rapist.’
Another read: ‘Make no mistake, Alex... I am going to have sex with you this year, even if it means I have to rape you.’ Miss Lovell said: ‘I’ll never forget reading those words. It was a sick escalation in disgusting content. I started shaking immediately.’
The host said the letters forced her to change her life. She added: ‘The police guided me in ways to keep myself safe by changing my driving routes, not leaving work without a colleague, even for coffee, and CCTV security at home. You can’t go out on your own because you don’t know what this person is. I didn’t know whether I had met him because I didn’t know anything about him.’
Miss Lovell, speaking out to mark National Stalking Awareness Week, stressed: ‘I was jumpy. I had a heightened awareness of everything around me.’ She said the messages were ‘really rude, very suggestive, quite pornographic and full of fantasy’.
Hawthorn was caught after police released images of a message signed ‘Gordon’ with five crosses – and the sign-off was recognised by a woman who had received a Valentine’s card from him.