If others were chasing her for interviews why did she only accept £250 ? I don’t believe her
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The Daily Mail fire walled article 08/05/2024
REVEALED: The truth about the real-life 'Martha' from Baby Reindeer
Among the millions of viewers lapping up every second of the
Netflix hit Baby Reindeer are a select few for whom, in particular, the TV series is sending shivers down the spine.
For two weeks now, the seven-part mini series has held the number one spot in the Netflix charts, not least because the dark tale of the struggling stand-up comic and the woman who stalked him is based on a true story even more disturbing than the events portrayed on screen.
As this newspaper revealed last weekend, it didn't take long for internet sleuths to track down a 58-year-old Scottish woman who bears uncanny similarities to the fictional stalker 'Martha', despite claims from comedian Richard Gadd - who
penned and starred in the autobiographical show - that he had disguised her identity to such an extent that 'I don't think she would recognise herself'.
But, as the Mail can reveal, Gadd's self-penned show has also resurrected disturbing memories for those who have their own stories to tell about the woman.
As well as a neighbour who witnessed close hand her disturbing behaviour over several years, those affected include several members of the Scottish
Labour Party who well remember how she wreaked havoc among their ranks in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Several party stalwarts were present, nearly 25 years ago, when the woman was forcibly removed from a party parliamentary selection meeting in
Glasgow after launching an astonishing verbal attack on one of the candidates there that day.
Raging against a London-based black female hopeful for the Glasgow Cathcart Parliamentary nomination, the woman, who was then a Labour Party member, reduced the potential candidate, from London, to tears after accusing her of being wheeled in at the last minute by party members to 'bump local Scottish women off the short list'.
'All hell broke loose,' says one who was there that day at Castlemilk Labour Club in Glasgow which has since burnt down.
'As a Scot, but with no connection to the constituency, she started haranguing the woman who was from London and accused her of being a token candidate,' he recalls.
The candidate, a Labour councillor from south-east London, was on her phone and, according to other by-standers, the woman grabbed it out of her hand and at the same time 'mistakenly' pulled her hair before being 'forcibly' ejected by party members.
But speaking to the Glasgow Herald newspaper after the event, the woman, believed to be the inspiration for Baby Reindeer stalker Martha, said: 'As far as I'm concerned there were fights before the meeting, there were fights after the meeting, and there was an ethnic minority incident.'
Around the same time, the woman was harassing several key members of the Labour Party after failing to win her own nomination for a seat in the Scottish Parliament.
The most prominent of those she targeted was the late Donald Dewar, who became Scotland's inaugural First Minister in 1999 and died in 2000 aged 63.
In the late 1990s, when Dewar was still a Glasgow MP, the woman is said to have frequently turned up to his Anniesland constituency surgeries, at times claiming to be his 'special adviser' and, at others, launching tirades of abuse against him.
A Labour insider commented to the press at the time: 'This woman was causing Donald a lot of problems. Even now, the colour drains from his face at the mention of her.
'She would turn up shouting and swearing at him in front of lots of people and calling everybody names.
'Nobody could believe it when she even tried to put herself forward as a candidate for the Scottish Parliament and Westminster. But everybody knew what they were dealing with.'
As exclusively reported in the Mail on Sunday last week, Laura Wray, the solicitor widow of late Labour MP Jimmy Wray, also claims to have suffered at the woman's hands over a five-year period after taking on the law graduate from Aberdeen University for a two-week trial at her Glasgow law firm in 1997.
The woman, who was born and raised in a village in Stirlingshire in Scotland, had spun a 'real hard-luck story' about how she had no family support and how, after obtaining her law degree, she couldn't get a training contract required to become a solicitor.
But Mrs Wray dismissed her within days after becoming alarmed at her behaviour and later became so concerned that she issued her staff with panic alarms. She says that, at one stage, the woman made a death threat against her late husband.
Laura Wray said she recognised her stalker as soon as she watched Baby Reindeer.
Indeed, despite Gadd's claims to have disguised his stalker's identity, both the on-screen 'Martha' and the real-life woman are Scottish, studied law at university and claim to be high-flying lawyers despite never qualifying. They are the same age and also physically alike.
Laura was chilled to see one scene in which 'Martha' flips from exuberance to screaming rage in a heart beat.
'That put it beyond doubt,' she said. 'I've seen her do that. I know Martha by her real name but my jaw dropped watching the series. It brought back so many things to me that I'd forgotten.'
In one scene in the drama, Gadd's character, Donny, is seen googling Martha and finding a newspaper article - fictionalised for the show - with the headline: 'Sick stalker targets barrister's deaf child'.
In real life, the woman falsely accused Laura and her husband of assaulting their son, Frankie, who was born in 2002 with a rare chromosomal disorder. The final straw, Laura applied for a restraining order, which was granted.
While the woman had given Laura a hard-luck story, she was raised in the picturesque village near Stirling, where she descends from a long line of livestock farmers stretching back more than a century.
She is the eldest of two daughters born to an ex-army mechanic and his wife, a sales assistant. While her father has passed away, her mother still lives in the village but, along with her sister, declined to speak to journalists this week.
A pupil at the local high school, in 1983, when she was 18 years old, she won an entrance bursary award in an annual competition held by Aberdeen University.
The woman has several childhood photographs on her open Facebook page, showing a smiling, happy-looking, well-dressed girl. One image shows her laughing on a sandy beach in shorts and t-shirt, another dressed in the Brownie uniform.
She has also posted photographs of herself in academic dress taken in Aberdeen's Seaton Park after her graduation ceremony. She says it took place in 1990 by which time she would already have been 25. It's not clear why she was so old when she graduated.
Locals in the village where she grew up describe the woman's family as 'ordinary' but one elderly villager described the woman as 'a law unto herself' from a young age. Several said that while they knew the mother, they hadn't seen her eldest daughter for years.
This ties in with an account given to the Mail this week by a pensioner who lived next door to the woman for nearly five years in Glasgow who said she never went home and never received visitors.
The woman, who spoke to the Mail on condition of anonymity, lived next door to the alleged stalker in the affluent Glasgow suburb of Jordanhill.
Soon after the woman moved into the housing association flat next door, she came round to introduce herself.
'At first I thought she was very nice,' says the former neighbour who has since moved away. 'She said she was a paralegal secretary working for a big law firm. She was quite smartly dressed and well-spoken. She seemed to know a lot about everything.
'But then she started knocking on my door all the time. At first she asked for sugar, then it was teabags. She used to come up with all sorts of strange excuses for knocking. It got so bad that I'd have to pretend I wasn't in. I'd even park my car down the street so she couldn't see it.'
There were other signs that all was not right in the woman's life.
'Her flat was a shambles. You couldn't get inside for all the paper and books and the dirty dishes piled up. It was horrendous. I don't know how she could live like that,' says the former neighbour.
The woman had lots of soft toys in her flat, she says - just like 'Martha', who gives Gadd's character, Donny, the nickname Baby Reindeer after one of her favourite cuddly toys.
'She said she wasn't in touch with her family and that she didn't get on with them. And while she talked a lot about people she knew and said she had a boyfriend, I never saw her with anyone or saw anyone visiting.'
Early on, she witnessed the woman having violent rows on her mobile on the landing between their flats.
'I remember hearing her screaming down the phone at people and thinking I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of her. It was terrible. I was very wary of her after that. She was volatile.'
Around ten years ago, says the neighbour, the woman moved out at short notice, claiming she was going to London where she had a new job.
'After she moved she kept calling me. It was up to five times a day. I asked her to stop but she wouldn't, not until I threatened to call the police.'
I’ll be tuning in.
