A bus company stalker whose behaviour made the TV screen in 2017 told her victim just days after being released from jail: “If I wanted to track you down I could find where you live.”
In a series of Facebook messages to the Thames Travel and Oxford Bus Company manager, Charlie Howells suggested that her victim should kill herself – then said that she could help her do it.
Prosecutor Josh Happé read from the ‘volley’ of Facebook messages sent overnight on April 2, just 12 days after she was released from a two year prison sentence for harassing the same victim.
Howells asked the woman, who first came to the defendant’s attention when she was a prosecution witness after Howells began stalking Oxfordshire bus driver Imre Marton, if it was ‘worth making the first statement if you knew what you know now’.
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“It turned out to be the worst thing you ever did,” she wrote.
“You have had to change your whole life because of one person.”
The obsessive said she was well-known in the area where her victim lived. “If I wanted to track you down I could find where you live,” she said.
“To be honest, you don’t get that long inside. I know they say a life sentence. That’s only 10 years.”
Chillingly, she told the woman: “I could be standing outside your house right now.”
Despite the woman not having children, Howells threatened the imagined youngsters.
The victim rang the police after receiving the messages on April 2 and April 3, but did not open them.
The last message was received at 10.33am on April 3. Howells was arrested 32 minutes later.
In her statement, which was summarised to the court, the victim described harassment she faced as a ‘never ending battle with Howells’. “I just want her to go away and leave me alone,” she added.
Howells, of no fixed address and appearing in court via video link from HMP Eastwood Park, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to breaching a restraining order.
She also admitted breach of an interim stalking protection order, which was signed-off by the magistrates and served on her two days after she was released from prison on March 21.
On Thursday (June 15), Oxford Crown Court heard she had 12 breaches of a restraining order on her record.
Her involvement with the courts dates back almost a decade. She initially became obsessed with bus driver Imre Marton, lying in wait for him at bus stops around Oxfordshire. She stood inches from Mr Marton so she could ‘sniff’ him and bombarded him with messages.
Mr Marton went on BBC documentary My Stalker and Me in 2017, telling producers that he was concerned for his life and wore a stab-proof vest.
According to reports, after the programme aired Howells sent him a social media message, threatening: “Well now Charlie knows where not to stab you.”
Mitigating for Howells on Thursday, defence advocate Gareth James said ‘no end of psychological and psychiatric reports’ had been written on behalf of the young woman.
“All of [them] cannot explain why she behaves in this way,” he added.
“Even she doesn’t fully understand why she behaves in this way.”
He suggested that a new scheme aimed at addressing those with ‘compulsive and obsessive behaviour’ issues could provide a solution for Howells. Thames Valley’s police and crime commissioner was funding places on the course, Mr James said.
Jailing her for 28 months, Judge Ian Pringle KC told Howells: “You don’t really take any notice of orders that are made, despite the fact efforts were made at the initial stages to help you.”
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