STALKER DAD BOMBARDED EX WITH MESSAGES AND BUGGED HER HOME
A dad-of-four bombarded his ex with calls and messages, secretly entered her home at night, installed a listening device in her kitchen and tracked her in the months after they broke up, a court has heard.Rhys Jones, 44, was married to Amber Taylor for five years before they broke up in the spring of 2024.
Jones, of Wheal Agar, appeared at Truro Magistrates' Court for trial on Wednesday (February 18), where he was found guilty of stalking without fear/ alarm/ distress, having previously pleaded not guilty.
The court heard how the defendant sent an excessive number of messages, calls and voice notes to Ms Taylor between July and November 2024, including from an unknown “burner phone” number.
It also heard how Jones travelled for miles to find his ex wife on a night out with friends, turned up unannounced in her home and installed a listening device in her kitchen.
Giving evidence, Ms Taylor, who shares three children with the defendant, said on one occasion she received 82 messages from Jones in a 24-hour period.
The 32-year-old hairdresser said she wanted to keep things peaceful “for the children's sake” and was “more than willing to reply if it was about the children”.
“Over the course of time I got so used to it, but the police said this is not normal,” she said.
“As time went on I found the nicer I was being, the more it was being used against me.” One evening, Ms Taylor said she was in Truro with friends when she received 15 phone calls from Jones within 30 minutes.
She described one phone call in which he told her “‘if you put the phone down now I’m coming to your house’”.
She also described being with clients at work when Jones would be “ringing or turning up”.
“I would hear from Mr Jones every single day,” she said.
“Messages about how much he loved me, how much he wanted to get back together.” On one occasion in August 2024 she described being “absolutely petrified” when she came downstairs after putting her children to bed to find Jones - a “dark figure” - standing in the hallway.
“I was absolutely petrified because I didn’t know who was standing downstairs,” she said of the incident.
On another occasion, she found a listening device had fallen from a work surface in her kitchen after Jones, a tattoo artist, came to drop off their children.
Ms Taylor described a black box falling from one of the kitchen units and when she broke it open, she found a sim card inside.
Within minutes, the court heard, Jones was driving back down the road apologising, saying he shouldn’t have done it.
He later told the court he never used the device and turned back minutes after installing it, realising he had been wrong to do so.
“Messages about how much he loved me, how much he wanted to get back together.” During her evidence she also described receiving text messages from an unknown number.
The sender of the texts “knew where I was, what I was doing”, she said.
“They were talking very highly of Rhys.” Ms Taylor noted that Jones had sent her the number a year before telling her it was a burner phone he had for work.
She also described being in a pub with a group of friends miles away in Sennen when she saw Jones “standing there”.
When she asked Jones how he knew she was there she said he said “I was tracking you”.
The defence put to Ms Taylor the messages exchanged between her and Jones were “civil” and “almost affectionate”.
“I wouldn’t say affectionate,” Ms Taylor said.
“I tried to keep the peace and was maybe kinder than I should have been.
I would call it being a responsible parent.” In his evidence, Jones claimed he was “desperate” to save his family from falling apart following the break-up.
He said: “My family means everything to me.” He added: “I wasn't aggressive, I wasn't forceful.
If you see my messages they are me begging her.
“I do understand from another perspective it can be too much.
But when you are in that situation it’s so hard.” He said he had been made to believe Ms Taylor was seeing someone else - something she denies - and he wanted to find “the truth”.
He added: “She was implying and making me believe she just needed a little bit of time and we’d be able to be a unit again.
I felt there was light at the end of the tunnel.
“I have got no-one to lean on, to guide me through this sort of stuff.
It’s easy for anyone to look from the outside.
I had so much guilt that I couldn’t keep my family together.” Asked whether planting the device, the trip to Sennen, the use of a burner phone and excessive calls and messages would amount to stalking, Jones said: “I needed the truth because someone close to us said, 'you need the truth'.” Of the listening device and burner phone, he added: “I didn't leave it in and I didn’t use it.” “(The burner phone) was my immature moment.”
