'Nosey' Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator, 70, helps convict Lothario next door after spying on his hot tub romps for 3 years
By Daily Mail ReporterLast updated at 8:18 AM on 6th June 2011
- 'Get your t**s out,' he said to two frolicking women
- With pan pipe music playing he yelled: 'Oh yes, oh yes'
- 51-year-old fined £100 for noise abatement
- 'I've never had anyone perv over me before,' he said
Award-winner: Pauline Palmer with her certificate proving how revered she is as a Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator
When she wasn’t on the lookout for criminal goings-on in her neighbourhood, the 71-year-old was keeping an eagle eye on what neighbour Brian Collins, 51, was up to.
She watched him from the day he moved in, a court was told.
For three years, Mrs Palmer kept a detailed diary on his activities – including sessions in his garden hot tub with women, and when he had sex in his bedroom.
In one of her notes, she wrote: ‘I saw Mr Collins in his hot tub with two women. He said “get your t**s out, b****”.’
In her diary, she also recorded when women stayed overnight with Mr Collins. And she noted the comings and goings of male visitors, some of whom ‘wore baseball caps’.
Mrs Palmer took down vehicle registration numbers, noted conversations and admitted putting her ear to the adjoining wall of their Victorian terraced homes – hers at No 12 St Julian Grove, Colchester, his at No 14.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard that she amassed sufficient information to persuade Colchester Council to serve a noise abatement order on Mr Collins, even though his neighbour on the other side said she had never heard any noise.
Mr Collins, who is on incapacity benefit, was fined £100 for breaching the noise abatement order, and faces a further bill of £365 in legal costs after failing in an appeal.
Mr Collins said Mrs Palmer was ‘obsessive’, and claimed she was invading his privacy and stalking him. He said: ‘She’s nosy, interfering, been on her own for at least 30 years. Her attitude is obsessive, it’s almost damned near frightening.
‘I have never had anyone perv over me before, write down that they’ve heard me having sex in my bedroom or watch me in a hot tub with a couple of women.’ Mr Collins, who said he had never spoken to Mrs Palmer, added: ‘She’s a complete pain. This is obsessive behaviour. She’s complained to everybody, it’s what she does.’
Too close for comfort: The neighbouring homes of Pauline Palmer and Brian Collins
In January she was awarded Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator of the Year by Essex Police. Environmental control officer Guy Milham visited Mrs Palmer’s home in September 2009 and said the music from next door was a statutory nuisance.
‘I could hear Mr Collins in his hot tub,’ he said. ‘The music changed to panpipes to which Mr Collins was occasionally shouting “Oh yes, oh yes”.’ But Mr Collins’s other neighbour, Nicola Bailey, told the court she never heard him play loud music.
Last night Mrs Palmer, a divorced mother of two, told the Mail: ‘He made my life a misery. Sometimes the noise got so bad I had to go and stay with a relative for a few days.
‘It’s been one of my most unusual cases but it does show how important it is to keep a record of what’s happened.’
