Scoopy
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UK News
Stalker: Maria Marchese Stalker Gets Nine Years
Updated: 13:00, Friday January 19, 2007
An "evil and obsessed" stalker who hounded a top psychiatrist and his fiancee has been jailed for nine years.
Maria Marchese was sentenced at London's Southwark Crown Court for putting the couple through a nightmare of harassement and fear.
Marchese, 45, did her best to ruin Dr Jan Falkowski's reputation and threatened to kill the woman he loved, the court heard.
For years she bombarded the couple, their families and colleagues with chilling text messages, phone calls and emails in what the judge said was the most serious case of its kind that he had heard of.
In one text she warned accountant Deborah Pemberton, 35, that she would be burnt in her wedding dress.
In another she told her to "dig your own grave". Yet another read "your life will end, gunman paid".
Another time she burgled the 45-year-old consultant psychiatrist's riverboat home and turned all the lights on. Then she broke in again and opened all the gas taps, risking a lethal explosion.
Having scuppered their marriage plans and destroyed their relationship, the former Selfridges cheese seller then accused the doctor of drugging and raping her in his hospital office.
To back up her false claims, she rummaged through his dustbin and used a condom to frame him.
Dr Falkowski, a record-breaking powerboat racer, was arrested, charged with the attack and then suffered for 18 months under the shadow of suspicion before his legal team managed to get the evidence to clear his name.
Argentinian-born Marchese did not show a flicker of emotion as Judge John Price told her she had been convicted on the clearest evidence of a "sustained, terrifying campaign of threats to kill and harassment".
He said: "It is difficult to imagine a more serious case. The effect on the victims was dramatic."
