'Obsessed' man jailed for attack

A man who bugged a woman's bedroom weeks before he attacked her and her boyfriend, has been jailed for three years.

Cardiff Crown Court heard how Keith Margetson, a plasterer, hid behind curtains in his victim's living room and attacked the couple with a pickaxe handle when they returned from a night out.

On the night concerned you armed yourself with the pickaxe handle and the gun

Judge Peter Jacobs

Margetson, 40, from Port Talbot in south Wales, then held them prisoner in the house by threatening them for several hours with an imitation gun.

The court was told that Margetson had become obsessed with his victim and that he had fixed the transmitting end of a baby monitor under her bed as a bug.

"It has quite some range and he put it there because he wanted to listen in," said Tim Evans, prosecuting.

The case is being heard at Cardiff Crown Court

"It must have been preying on his mind, what she was doing sexually."

Margetson admitted falsely imprisoning the couple, two counts of actual bodily harm and possessing of an imitation firearm.

But he denied indecently assaulting the woman and was found not guilty of the charge.

Sentencing him to three years in prison, Judge Peter Jacobs said: "On the night concerned you armed yourself with the pickaxe handle and the gun.

"You struck the man she was with about the body with the pickaxe handle but not, fortunately for him and you, with full force.

"There is no doubt that you kept them there for a period of time.

"You terrified them and at some stage you used the gun. You pointed it at the man and he, in his not particularly robust state, feared the gun was going to be used upon him."