A young man stalked a Highland teenager from more than 500 miles away – and told his victim he would kill her and her family.
Daniel Edmunds posted intimate pictures of the young woman online when she tried to end their two-year internet relationship.
The 26-year-old bombarded Katrina Sillars with increasingly threatening text messages and e-mails.
Inverness Sheriff Court yesterday that earlier in their “romance” she had agreed to send him photographs of herself naked.
But fiscal depute Roderick Urquhart said that when she attempted to end all contact with Edmunds, the bricklayer posted the pictures on social media sites.
Mr Urquhart said Miss Sillars and Edmunds struck up an online friendship after she was downloading music from a site which included an internet chat room.
She was aged 17 at the time.
Mr Urquhart added: “The friendship then became a ‘cyber romance’, although they never met.
“They would exchange messages daily and she eventually agreed to provide pictures of herself in a state of undress.
“When she wanted the relationship to come to an end, she made repeated requests to Edmunds to stop contacting her.
“He ignored them and became less friendly, abusive and threatening.
“She continued to tell him to stop and in one message he told her to stop ignoring him or he would kill her.
“In October, he sent her a message saying ‘Ha ha, everyone can see you. Your body is on Twitter’.
“It seems they were only sent to one person, but in November he sent them to her friend who became concerned, told her mother, who in turn told Miss Sillars’s mother and she went to the police.
“The victim didn’t tell the police because she was in fear and embarrassed at the time because of the way it had escalated.”
Mr Urquhart added that she produced thousands of his messages to police, which she said was only a selection from a larger quantity.
When police raided Edmunds’s home, he told officers: “This will be about Katie. I have just been stupid.
“I guess I was just trying to be controlling. I wouldn’t have done anything.”
Edmunds, of 2 Lanesborough Rise, Stockwood, Bristol, admitted stalking Miss Sillars from January 1, 2012 to December 13, 2013 in Dingwall, Forres and Inverness.
He admitted sending threatening and abusive messages by e-mail and phone text, threatening to kill her and members of her family, repeatedly contacting her friends to obtain information about her and posting personal photographs on social media without her express permission.
Sheriff Margaret Neilson deferred sentence for reports until January 22.