From his room in the house he shared with his mother in a small town near Chicago Edward John Best led a solitary existence. An IT worker he spent many hours online for his job and pleasure - gaming and linking up to chat rooms.
In 2018 via the platform Discord, he began talking to a number of people. One, a woman, from Tameside, he was attracted to. Their mutual exchanges continued for three years - but they never met.
A GMP detective has revealed how Best then began to make strange demands of her. On one occasion he asked to listen to her sleeping, according to GMP. He also persuaded her to send images of herself and threatened to show them to her family and post them publicly if she did not send more, the force said.
The detective said the relationship turned sour and the woman eventually blocked him on social media. Before that Best's response was to bombard her with up to 100 messages a day - some both threatening and vile. In one he threatened to kill her and then rape her corpse. He also unleashed his vitriol at the woman's relatives and friends via Facebook.
According to GMP Best quit his job, moved out of his home in Huntley, which has the motto "The friendly village with country charm" and for a while was sleeping in his car. Late in March this year his raging fit of pique over the end of the relationship became something much darker after he discovered his online ex had a new boyfriend. Best booked a flight from Chicago to Manchester via Istanbul.
Within four hours of arriving in Manchester on March 22nd this year he had hired a Volvo from Enterprise in Tameside, booked into an Airbnb and was outside the woman's home. He also took a bus from Manchester to the property which he spied on for days.
GMP say that while in Greater Manchester he stayed at three different Airbnb properties. Sinisterly he also did numerous Google searches involving firearms, the force said. Four days after arriving he searched for "are guns legal in Manchester"; "gun crimes in Hyde" and went on the MEN website to read "The guns taken off the streets of Greater Manchester as cops try to disarm crime gangs." plus "Moment armed police stormed home after taxi driver threatened with gun', the force said.
Finally at about 6pm on April 3rd he again returned to the Hyde property. He was armed with a hammer and also in his rucksack was black tape, which GMP said he later told officers he would have used to bound someone if need be.
CCTV footage caught Best walking by the rear of the terraced house and then doubling back and climbing over a wall into the backyard. He then walked through an open back door into the house.
According to GMP the woman inside was not his target but her cousin, who had popped round to feed her cat while she was on holiday with her brother and mother. Poignantly the family were away to mark the anniversary of the death of the woman's father.
GMP said that in the house Best held a hammer to the cousin's face, then barricaded the front door with furniture and locked the back one. He then quizzed her about his target and searched the house for pictures and information about her and her family.
The cousin managed to hide her mobile phone and later made a call to the owner of the property pleading for help. When the owner arrived she was able to escape through a front window as Best was upstairs rooting for personal details about the woman.
GMP say Best then vaulted over the back wall and ran off. He got a taxi to his Airbnb in Gorton and laid low - but checked Google to see if the MEN and other media had covered the story of his crime, the force said. GMP said he also sent a message to his online ex saying "What do I do now. I feel sick and just want to get it over with."
The next day he took a train to Birmingham having booked a flight to New York - but he missed his flight by 40 minutes. He had also searched online "If you are wanted for arrest can you still get on a plane", GMP said.
GMP's Critical Wanted Unit were by then hunting Best and issued alerts to all forces that he must not be allowed to leave the UK. Best travelled to Holyhead and caught a ferry to Dublin having booked a flight from there to New York. But as he tried to disembark from the ferry he was intercepted by The Garda, refused entry to Ireland, and escorted back on a ferry to Holyhead where GMP officers were waiting to arrest him.
In a statement submitted to Manchester Crown Court, the woman who had been in the online relationship with him, said Best had left her terrified. "It has affected my sense of well being, especially when I am inside the house I don't feel safe anymore. I have been finding it difficult to sleep as I have been getting nightmares about him.
"I felt very vulnerable and he treated me like he owed me. I already suffered from PTSD and had been getting therapy. My side effects have become enhanced.
"If I hear a slight noise I get very jumpy and I feel I am high alert and paranoid. I received messages from 'John' for the past three years and after a couple of months his aggressive behaviour began. I felt very vulnerable and he treated me like he owned me. He was manipulative, he made me afraid to talk to my friends as he would harass them the more I spoke to them.
"As a result I lost a lot of friends. I suffer from anxiety and struggle to make friends in person so all of my friends are online. These friends stopped speaking to me as they felt they were in danger as I was speaking to him. Eventually I lost all my friends as I had to come off line to escape what was happening.
"He coerced me to send him images and if I didn't reply he sent them to my friends or posted them online publicly. I felt my parents looked at me differently after that, they didn't trust me, it rocked our relationship, and it felt like all my fault.
"I felt held hostage emotionally, like if I didn't carry on talking to him it wouldn't stop. He would get more angry. It also affected my work. I would try and work online because of my anxiety and do art commissions, sell T-shirts to third party sites, and make jewellery to advertise on Facebook. He found this and harassed people that had liked it.
"As a result I had to shut this down which affected my finances. This had a ripple affect and contributed to my depression. After he came to my address I feel violated that he has been trough my things. He took a photocopy of my birth certificate and an old passport, which concerns me as if he ever gets released he knows my details. "
Detective Emily Blair of Tameside CID said: "Best told us he had a job initially in IT and was earning quite bit of money. Then he left that job spontaneously prior to coming to the UK, and was starting to break down relationships with family members. He was living in his car and not really speaking to people.
"On a social media platform called Discord he met up with the victim in a chat room. This was in March 2018 when they first started talking. They had mutual friends in the group. They had been playing video games and then they have fallen into a relationship. it was a romantic relationship and they would speak on the phone and through social media. They never met each other it was all long distance.
"The woman stopped the contact because his behaviour was becoming obsessive. He wanted to keep the phone calls on while she was sleeping so he could listen to her breathing. He has made a lot of threats to her, saying he will attack her; he will rape her corpse once he has killed her.
"He started contacting her family members asking for information and was threatening them. He found out where the woman's brother was at college and rang the college and made malicious allegations about her brother - all untrue.
"He contacted her parents, and tried to get her into trouble making claims about her and slagging off their parenting. The woman's father passed away during this. Best sent messages to her father saying 'I hope you die'. "
Commenting on Best she added: "He was a bit of a loner and would stay in playing video games and didn't have much face to face contact with people - it was all online- he led a virtual kind of life really.
"The woman had blocked him a few months before this incident. They had not had contact. He had not told her was coming over. Within four hours of arriving he was stalking her house - walking up and down the street. He did that on three or four days.
"We don't know what he was planning to do. He says he was wanting to speak to her. So the assumption is he was waiting for her. He claims he wasn't going to harm her. She was there but went on holiday a couple days before he got into the house."
DC Blair said: "Her cousin was pet sitting her cat and had left the back door open to let the cat in and out when Best arrived. He barricaded the house and then he was in the property for over three hours asking her questions.
"He asked where the woman was and has been looking at photographs of her and family members. He pointed at a picture of her father and said 'he's not dead' but he was. He was asking when they family would be back said he had been googling alot of stuff about hitting someone over the head, and what weapon to hit someone over the head with. He was calling himself a psycho."
While in the house Best also searched on Google "I am about to throw my life away" and "I am about to do something terrible". DC Blair said: "During his interview Best said he didn't know what his intention was when he came to the UK. apart from he didn't want to hurt the woman he just wanted to speak to her. He denied any intent but confirmed committing the offences. He said he had romantic feelings towards her.
"I was on a night shift when the job came in and went to the location. The cousin was very shaken up. She is slightly built, and has health issues herself, so was very upset. I think Best was obsessed and I think that if the woman had been in the house she would have probably come to some harm. Finding out she had a new boyfriend could have been the trigger for him coming to the UK - because he did not have contact anymore with the woman and the control over her."
At Manchester Crown Court in Minshull Street, Best was jailed for seven years after pleading guilty to stalking between January 1st and April 3rd 2022; attempted false imprisonment; false imprisonment; and having an offensive weapon.
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