An obsessed stalker with a three-decade fixation with ex-BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis has been jailed for eight years after he attempted to breach a restraining order for the 20th time. Edward Vines wrote eight letters addressed to Ms Maitlis and her mother, expressing his "unrequited" love for her.
He tried to send the letters from HMP Nottingham between May 2020 and December 2021. A judge at Nottingham Crown Court told the 52-year-old he has shown "breath-taking persistence" in his efforts to contact his victim – saying it was clear he saw the restraining order as "meaningless".
Jurors heard how Vines had "systematically and with increasing frequency" breached two separate restraining orders imposed on him in 2002 and 2009 – with 12 breaches to his name and seven separate prosecutions. In one of his letters to the journalist, he told her he would "continue to brood and to write letters in prison" unless she spoke to him about "her behaviour" while they were at Oxford University together in 1990.
