An “obsessed” stalker has been jailed for three years after bombarding the BBC’s Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis with letters and emails over a period of 25 years.
Edward Vines, 46, was found guilty of breaching a restraining order at Oxford crown court on Monday.
He and Maitlis met at Queens’ College, Cambridge, in 1989, and a few months later he declared his love for her. He claimed in court that they had remained on good terms until their relationship cooled towards the end of their first year at university.
He told the court: “We remained friends throughout the whole of the Easter term. She wrote to me over the Easter holidays – letters which I still have. But in April it changed dramatically, in my eyes. She appeared not to want to see me. She occasionally put me down in small ways, but nonetheless hurtful ways.”
Vines said her rejection of him triggered a series of mental health problems and sparked a need to find out why their friendship had cooled. For the next quarter of a century he continually tried to contact her, demanding to know why she had severed links to him.
In 2002, he was convicted of harassment after Maitlis contacted police about his erratic behaviour following the murder of her fellow broadcaster Jill Dando. In 2009, after Vines continued trying to contact Maitlis, he was given a restraining order.
On Monday a jury found him guilty of two counts of breaching the order by sending two letters to the journalist and emails and letters to her mother, Marion Maitlis, between 10 May and 26 June last year.
Julian Lynch, prosecuting, described the letters as “long and rambling”. In one, read out in court on Friday, Vines wrote that he believed her treatment of him was due to the fact she was attracted to him and was dismayed he had not made the romantic overtures she had expected because he was too frigid.
At an earlier hearing Vines pleaded guilty to two other breaches of the order.
Passing sentence, the judge Peter Ross said: “Putting it bluntly, you’ve never had any reasonable case to contact Ms Maitlis following the order. You have what appears to me a completely unshakable obsession, underpinned by a couple delusion with regards to the relationship that had existed between you and Ms Maitlis. That’s absolutely clear in the letters you have written to her.”
He added: “You have known for 25 years that this woman wants nothing to do with you. You’ve plagued her life and the life of her family.”
Maitlis was not in court for the sentencing. A statement read out on her behalf said Vines’s letters had made her fear for her own safety and that of her family.
After parting from his lawyer, Greg Foxsmith, before sentencing, Vines refused to commit to a pledge made earlier in the trial that he would never contact the family again if convicted.
“I will not write to Emily Maitlis or her mother, most likely ever again. It’s early days, your honour,” he said. When pressed on whether he would promise to stop contacting the presenter and her family, he would only say: “I will never contact them again if I’m defeated rationally in court – and I cannot say I have been today.”
The judge replied: “That is not the unambiguous assurance I was seeking.”
Vines said he had no qualms with the jury’s verdict, and added: “If I was on the panel, I would agree based on the way the case was presented by my defence.”
