Stalker sent undertakers to ex’s house

Accused dodges jail sentence

A stalker from Strathblane who relentlessly contacted a terrified woman and sent undertakers to her door to collect her dead body when she was still alive has narrowly avoided jail.

James Leslie, 43, refused Debra Reid’s pleas to stop contacting her after a short relationship and friendship didn’t work out.

He bombarded the 44-year-old with phone calls, cards and flowers – refusing to leave her alone despite her repeated requests.

Sick Leslie claimed he had terminal cancer in a desperate bid to maintain contact and told her he had weeks to live.

But after he posed as her teenage son to request undertakers pick up her remains and her children answered the door to the private ambulance she reported Leslie to the cops.

Infatuated Leslie accepted his guilt – but denied phoning the undertakers.

After a trial at Glasgow Sheriff Court, Leslie, from Strathblane, was unanimously convicted of stalking Miss Reid between April 1 and May 12, 2016, and sending funeral directors to her door and causing distress to her family.

This week Sheriff Martin Jones

Leslie – who has a previous conviction for stalking from 2013 – contacted Miss Reid on Facebook in February 2016.

The pair knew each other from school and met for coffees and walks and tried at a relationship but it didn’t work. As she tried to back out, Leslie began relentlessly houding her on the phone .

Records showed he called Miss Reid around 150 times over a seven week period. She eventually saved his number as ‘Jim Leslie **DON’T ANSWER’.

The mum-of-two eventually changed her number in a bid to stop him contacting her but he sent dozens of flowers and cards to her house and contacted her on different Facebook accounts he created.

On May 12, a phone call was made to Jonathan Harvey funeral directors by a man claiming to be her son Michael asking them to collect his mother’s body from the house.

Two undertakers appeared at the door later that day and as Miss Reid was out meeting a friend, her children answered the door.

Miss Reid told the court: “I was shocked and scared, not only for myself but for my children. I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen next.”

Dad-of-one Leslie said he was “in a dark hole” at the time having suffered a bereavement in 2014 but denied being the person who made the phone call to funeral directors.

I was shocked and scared, not only for myself but for my children. I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen next