Baby Reindeer: Was Fiona Harvey ever convicted?
YouTube/UncensoredThe Baby Reindeer finale depicts Martha being arrested for harassing Richard Gadd’s Donny, but was the alleged ‘real-life Martha’, Fiona Harvey, ever convicted for stalking?
Ever since the release of the Netflix series, the hunt for the Baby Reindeer characters’ real-life counterparts has been on. This is despite creator Gadd, who based the series on his own experiences, asking fans to stop speculating.
Fiona Harvey, a 58-year-old law graduate from Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, was eventually tracked down and accused of being Gadd’s real stalker. This culminated in her appearance on Piers Morgan’s Uncensored talk show, where she made some shocking claims.
Harvey, formerly known as Fiona Muir-Harvey, denied many of the allegations against her, including the implication that she was ever convicted of stalking.
Was Fiona Harvey ever convicted?
There’s currently no evidence of Fiona Harvey being convicted for allegedly stalking Richard Gadd. Now, Netflix is facing calls to provide the evidence, while Harvey claims she is looking to sue the streaming service and Gadd.
At the end of Baby Reindeer, after Donny finds a threatening voicemail from Martha, she is arrested and charged with harassment. She pleads guilty to the charges, and is sentenced to nine months in prison and a five-year restraining order to protect Donny.
But, in real life, there appear to be no reports or court documents suggesting Harvey was charged.
During The Real Martha Uncensored, Morgan had Harvey watch the court scene before asking if she ever went to trial. “No, of course not,” she replied, while denying ever having been to prison or charged with a criminal offence.
Following the TV interview, UK lawyer Chris Daw appeared on Morgan’s channel where he claimed Harvey has grounds to sue if it can be proven that she hasn’t been convicted, and that he’s “in discussions now with a law firm in London with a view to taking the case forward.”
On May 17, Scottish National Party MP John Nicolson wrote a letter to Netflix’s senior director of public policy, Benjamin King, calling on the streaming service to provide evidence that Baby Reindeer’s real-life Martha had been charged.
King previously said in a parliamentary committee that Baby Reindeer is “obviously a true story of the horrific abuse that the writer… suffered, at the hands of a convicted stalker.”
Referencing this quote, Nicolson wrote, “Journalists have thus far been unable to find a record of the conviction to which you referred. Can you provide me with the evidence for this serious claim which you made to me at the Select Committee?”
Meanwhile, Harvey took to Facebook to claim that she is now “putting together a legal team” to “sue Gadd and Netflix.”
Although there’s no evidence to suggest she has been convicted for harassment, lawyer Laura Wray claimed she and her late husband, Glasgow MP Jimmy Wray, took out an emergency protective order against Harvey.
Wray said she experienced similar issues to Gadd more than 20 years ago, alleging that Harvey falsely accused the couple of assaulting their three-year-old son who had been born with a rare chromosomal disorder.
“We took an interim interdict,” Wray said [via the Daily Record]. “I don’t think she responded and I don’t think there was a full hearing after because it did the trick in stopping her coming near me.
“It was a long time ago and I haven’t heard from her since. I’ve watched the Netflix show now and it’s quite uncanny, put it that way.”
Harvey denied ever stalking the Wrays during her interview with Piers, claiming that Laura was out to get her as she was “going for parliamentary selection.”
Fiona Harvey denies sending thousands of messages to Gadd
Harvey denies sending thousands of messages to Gadd, despite the suggestion she had sent 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail messages, 744 tweets, 106 pages of letters, and 46 Facebook messages.
According to her accounts, she only sent the Baby Reindeer creator “a handful of emails, never texted him, tweeted him around 18 times, never sent a Facebook message, and wrote him one letter.”
When Piers asked if she masked the fact that she wasn’t using an iPhone, perhaps to conceal the amount of messages she was sending, Harvey replied, “I’m not technology whizz kid of the year. I wasn’t doing that either.”
Harvey is also questioned about the hours of voicemails, to which she suggests perhaps Gadd secretly “recorded her at the Hawley Arms,” the Camden pub where he used to work.
The Real Martha Uncensored is available to watch on YouTube now. For more on Baby Reindeer, here are TV shows and movies to watch next, as well as the best series of 2024 so far. You can also find all the new shows heading to streaming this month.