'˜Neighbour from hell', 66, convicted of harassing couple in bizarre 18-month campaign

A nightmare neighbour harassed a couple by playing songs non-stop and intimidating them with a pottery figure of a fat woman.
Barry CarrBarry Carr
Barry Carr

Ex-chippie owner and former BNP candidate Barry Carr tormented neighbours in the cul-de-sac where he lived, a court was told.

Pensioner Barry Carr moved around the figurine of a reclining fat lady to target the woman who lives next, Blackpool magistrates heard.

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Jennifer Anderson said Carr chose the ornament to taunt her because it looks like her.

David Smith and Jennifer AndersonDavid Smith and Jennifer Anderson
David Smith and Jennifer Anderson

Carr moved the three-inch pottery figure – and other ornaments – in a bizarre 18-month campaign so that every time she went to and from her home she saw it.

A court was told that Carr believed his neighbours envied his wealth and that is why they object to his choice of the song, Will Young’s Jealousy, which he played around the clock.

Mrs Anderson said: “This man has tormented me...he knows that figurine looks like me.”

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Carr, 66, also put up model skulls around the outside of his home on Rossall Gate, Fleetwood, which has 19 security cameras, including some with night vision.

The figurineThe figurine
The figurine

He used the cameras to film Miss Anderson and her partner, bodyguard David Smith, every day of the year.

Carr also upset the couple by pointing a false camera with a red flashing light into their kitchen. He also played the song Jealousy and Strange Lady About Town by Frankie Laine on a loop. The court heard the songs had lyrics designed to torment Miss Anderson.

Carr also put up a 20ft flagpole on which he placed a large picture of Mr Smith and littered his garden with ornaments such as chattering false teeth and a large owl on his chimney with a camera in it.

None had been there before the complainants had moved in.

David Smith and Jennifer AndersonDavid Smith and Jennifer Anderson
David Smith and Jennifer Anderson
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He also put a bow tie on a skull fastened to a door which could be seen by the couple when they left their property.

They felt this was part of his campaign because Mr Smith would often wear a dinner suit and bow tie when he worked at night.

The couple decided to try to block out Carr’s view of their home and cut down the vision of his battery of cameras by raising the fence between their homes by 6ft.

However Carr then fastened the ornaments and a poster of Mr Smith to his fascia boards so they were still visible, the court was told.

The figurineThe figurine
The figurine
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When police asked him to remove the picture on his flagpole, Carr refused.

Sarah Perkins, prosecuting, said all was well when the couple moved in next to Carr.

She said: “His behaviour has become worrying, strange and obsessive. It has caused alarm and distress. They are a working couple and want to go to and from their work without being filmed.”

Miss Anderson told the hearing: “We moved in five years ago. The first six months were OK and we exchanged Christmas cards. Then we started to distance ourselves from him and realised he was filming us day in day out 365 days a year.

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“The next thing is that a figurine of a fat lady in a blue stripy dress like one I wear has been put on his window sill looking at me all the time.

“On the advice of police I kept a diary every day of times and events.

“The music was so bad I could not go into the garden during the summer. I was getting scared to leave home.”

Mr Smith admitted in evidence that he got so sick and tired of one of Carr’s cameras pointing down their drive that he tried to adjust it by using a long handled brush.

He also admitted losing his temper with Carr.

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He said: “He kept goading me saying I wasn’t a man and that my partner was fat and ugly,

“I am a former member of the Royal Protection Squad and can keep my nerve.

“But I did go up his drive a little and shoved him. I had had enough.

“He told me that because we rent our property is was bringing the neighbourhood down.

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“He tried games like putting a bundle of £10 notes in a bush near our garden. Like he was trying to tempt us to take the money and he would have it on film.”

Carr, who stood for the BNP in Fleetwood West in 2009, told the magistrates: “I was being called a Neighbour from Hell - a nightmare.I only have the cameras for my own protection.

“I could not believe it when two police officers turned up at my home and said they were investigating the positioning of a figurine of a fat lady following a complaint.”

Steven Townley, defending, said: “Some pathetic incidents have been magnified beyond belief. My client has been picked on because he lives alone and has never been married. How on earth police have got involved is a mystery. Allegations have been flying round like confetti.”

THE DETAILS

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Carr was found guilty after a two day trial of a charge that between 2016 and 2017 he harassed the named couple by the display and position of garden ornaments, watching them on CCTV, playing the same songs repeatedly and on occasion following Miss Anderson and taking a picture of her as she walked her dog.

Bench chairman David Hearton told Carr: “Some of these issues may seem trivial individually but together they become much more serious.”

“It was like the dripping tap syndrome - time after time after time causing stress and distress.”

Carr was given a 10 week jail term suspended for a year. He must pay his victims £200 each compensation and £900 court costs.

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He must not communicate with his neighbours ,not display photos of them and not have any camera pointing at the front of their home.

fter the case, Carr said “I do not feel justice has been done and I will appeal.”

Mr Smith said:”It has been a long process and we are happy with the outcome.”

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