The fake stories posted by Coleen Rooney on her private Instagram to “trap” Rebekah Vardy were revealed on the penultimate day of the libel trial.
In a viral social media post in October 2019, Ms Rooney, 36, said she had carried out a months-long “sting operation” and accused Ms Vardy, 40, of leaking “false stories” about her private life to the press.
Ms Vardy, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, denies leaking stories to the media and is suing her fellow footballer’s wife for libel, while Ms Rooney is defending the claim on the basis her post was “substantially true”.
The trial at the High Court in London previously heard how Ms Rooney, the wife of former England player Wayne Rooney, deliberately planted three false stories on her Instagram account while restricting them so they could only be viewed by Ms Vardy’s account.
Now screenshots of those stories have been revealed in court documents.
In the first of the stories, Ms Rooney posted an image of her car on 22 January 2019 showing a dented front driver-side door alongside the caption “RIP half a Honda…” and a laugh-crying emoji next to one of a monkey covering its eyes.
The following day, Ms Vardy’s agent Caroline Watt discovered the post about the car had been taken down.
Ms Vardy said in text messages to Ms Watt: “She’s a nasty b**** x” and “Would love to leak those stories x”
While Ms Watt replied: “She’s trash” and “I would have tried to have done a story on Coleen but the evidence has been deleted x”
On 25 January 2019, Ms Watt sent Ms Vardy a text message about Sun journalist Andy Halls, saying: “Halls is trying to do a story on Coleen crashing her car but her PR won’t even reply. I’ve told him I’m 100% confident that it happened but don’t know how.”
A few days later, on 27 January 2019, Ms Rooney published two posts on her Twitter account saying: “Thank you for the messages asking if I am ok… the car crash story was completely wrong… I wasn’t involved in a crash… the car was damaged by another car.
“Someone on my private Instagram seen the picture and is telling or selling stories to a certain newspaper”.
She added: “It’s happened several times now over the past couple of years. It’s sad to think someone, who I have accepted to follow me is betraying for either money or to keep a relationship with the press.”
Shortly after the tweets, Ms Vardy texted her agent and close friend Caroline Watt asking if she had seen Ms Rooney’s Twitter.
Ms Watt replied: “Such a victim. Poor Colleen.”
She added: And it wasn’t someone she trusted. It was me”
Another image showed the back of an aeroplane seat, with the caption: “Let’s go and see what this gender selection is all about”.
That was a false story on 8 April 2019 about Ms Rooney travelling to Mexico to see about a procedure that could determine a baby’s sex.
The third picture showed Ms Rooney “revealing” the basement of the Rooneys’ £20m Cheshire mansion had flooded.
The post showed a bottle of wine and was captioned: “Needed after today… flood in the basement of our new house… when it all seemed to be going so well.”
This led to an article in The Sun in October 2019.
Both Hugh Tomlinson QC, for Ms Vardy, and David Sherborne, for Ms Rooney, are expected to give their closing speeches on Thursday before Mrs Justice Steyn gives her decision in writing at a later date.
