Here we are, still unable to say with certainty whether or not Fiona Harvey’s sketchy personality is enough to confirm that she did indeed inspire the stalker who makes Richard Gadd’s life hell in Baby Reindeer.
But moments from her chat with Piers Morgan are falling into place as pieces of a bigger jigsaw puzzle, and they’re creating a picture that doesn’t look good for her. Whether it was Gadd and Netflix’s intention or not, Harvey was found by internet sleuths within a matter of hours after they cross-referenced the content of the emails Martha sends Donny in the series with the many, many tweets Harvey had sent to Gadd. During her interview with Morgan, she tried her best to ridicule the possibility of her sending thousands of emails, hundreds of messages, letters, and an insane amount of voicemails to Gadd, whom she claims she disliked but still engaged in banter that stretched to dropped overtly sexual-innuendos.
But inadvertently confirming many plot points in Baby Reindeer to be 100% true — after calling it a work of Gadd’s overheated imagination — and revealing unsettling practices she swears by weren’t the only things that have raised serious questions at her flimsy story…
Who else did Fiona Harvey stalk?
Gadd was evidently not Harvey’s only stalking victim — there was someone else whose life Harvey made hell before moving on to her next target. In her haste to enjoy her moment in the spotlight and milk the opportunity as much as she could, she inadvertently confirmed that her maiden name was Muir-Harvey, which corroborates a 25-year-old news report of the harassment solicitor Laura Wray and her family suffered after they hired one Fiona Muir on a two-week trial at their Glasgow law firm in 1997 only to fire her after a week for abuse. She then stalked the family and even made a fake complaint to Social Services that Laura was hitting her disabled child.
The story almost accurately matches what Donny’s research about Martha’s past revealed in Baby Reindeer.
Initially, when Baby Reindeer came out, Laura recognized the eerie similarities between its plot and what she had suffered for five years a long time ago. But after watching Fiona Harvey on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Laura has admitted to the Mirror that she is now worried about once again being a target of the woman who traumatized her family for a long time.
“I hadn’t thought about her for years. I had forgotten so much of it. Every time someone says a comment, it triggers it again. Memories of things that she did. Some of her actions. It’s pretty distressing. Watching her last night [on Piers], how did I manage to cope with that for so long?
My partner and I are concerned about what she might do next. Is she going to come after me? She is posting things on Facebook accusing me of all sorts, and of being abusive. You don’t know where it will end.”
Those who have seen Harvey’s interview might peg her as an eccentric character who exaggerates stories about her life. But for Laura, who insists Harvey is the threat that plagued her life years ago and has a penchant for seeking revenge, her stalker getting a platform (which did the bare minimum to hide her identity) and the limelight is not a good sign. As she pointed out, Harvey is indeed posting unhinged rants on her multiple Facebook accounts, even mentioning Laura in some of them and openly making accusations against her once again.
“Part of her is really enjoying this. She even had a makeover for Piers Morgan.”
During the interview, Harvey remained adamant that she never went to jail, got any court order, or had the police on her doorstep. But as per Laura’s recollection, the stalking and harassment stopped only when she went for an interim injunction against Harvey in 2002. “Thankfully, it worked. She didn’t defend it. We never heard any more from her,” she added.
Despite this and many other uncanny similarities between her and Baby Reindeer’s Martha, Harvey still threatens to sue Netflix and Gadd. Seeing as even temporarily believing any part of her story is becoming steadily impossible, let’s look at the two plausible possibilities: the woman is either not understanding the gravity of the situation — Gadd has proof of her abuse and all it will take is matching the IP address in the 41,000 emails to the email accounts she has (or had) — or Harvey is, as Laura spelled it out, frighteningly enjoying all the attention without a care about the consequences. We have a feeling the Baby Reindeer saga has only just begun.