British ‘stalker' followed US travel influencer to Bali
Alexandra Saper, an American influencer, claimed Rob Keating followed her to Bali, a court heard
A British 'stalker' followed an American travel influencer to Bali with a rope in his suitcase, a court has heard.
Rob Keating is alleged to have booked a one-way ticket to the Indonesian island after almost a year of harassing Alexandra Saper, an Instagram blogger, with emails and video messages.
'You're never getting rid of me,' he messaged Ms Saper on arrival before visiting bars and cafés near her island home, Portsmouth Crown Court was told.
Ms Saper, 33, a former lawyer who now earns a living from her Instagram page, The Wayfaress, which has more than 100,000 followers, told the jury that she was forced to flee the country in fear.
Mr Keating, a traffic worker living in his sister's garage in Havant, Hants, at the time, was arrested when he returned to the UK with 'black rope' in his suitcase, the court heard.
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of stalking involving serious alarm or distress.
Alexandra Saper loves to travel across the world
Ms Saper shares her adventures on Instagram
Opening the case, Alexandra Bull, prosecuting, told the court: 'Mr Keating is now 39 years old, between 2022 and 2023 he was living in his sister's garage... and working in a traffic job and he, too, frequently posted on social media and YouTube.'
He started following Ms Saper on Instagram in 2022 and sent her a 'weird and creepy' message, to which she replied 'Dude, why are you following me if you don't like my content', the court heard.
Ms Saper blocked Mr Keating, but he 'then found her business email connected to her website,' the prosecutor said.
The contact is said to have become 'incessant and constant' and grew more 'intense' and 'sexual in nature' later into 2022.
In September, Mr Keating 'described having sex with her to some length' in a video of himself talking to the camera, the court heard.
'He was speaking to her as though they were in a relationship, like he was in love with her and she with him,' Ms Bull said. One email included a threat to abduct her, she added.
The Instagram travel influencer has more than 100,000 followers
Ms Saper post scenes of her visits on her Instagram page, The Wayfaress
Ms Saper said in a video interview played to the court: 'He sent me a photo of a body in a suitcase and said he was going to kidnap me.'
She added that he said he knew she was 5ft 2in, which meant she would 'fit inside the suitcase'.
Ms Bull told the court he also sent Ms Saper a picture of a one-way ticket to Bali and said 'flights booked baby girl' along with around 30 videos of himself talking to the camera.
Ms Saper saw from posts on his Instagram page that he visited a bar she regularly went to with her friends, and went to cafés just 50 metres from her house, the court heard.
In her video evidence, she said he thought she was sending him secret messages through her Instagram posts.
She said: 'His interpretation of these posts was that they were secret coded messages about my love for him, or me asking him to come to Bali because I wanted to see him.
'He was convinced that I had asked him to come to Bali.'
She said she was forced to travel to Laos, south-east Asia, so that they were no longer in the same country.
She also stopped posting on Instagram, had to cancel work projects, stopped leaving the house, and became 'depressed' because of Mr Keating's alleged actions, the court heard.
The influencer reported him to the police in Bali, and spoke to the US and the UK embassies in the country.
Following his arrest in March 2023, Mr Keating told police in an interview that he was not sexually attracted to Ms Saper, but said that 'she had shown an interest in him and there could be something there'.
He continued to stalk Ms Saper between September and November 2024, at which point he lived in Horsham in West Sussex, the court was told.
Mr Keating posted a picture of a plane ticket from London to Bali with the caption 'round 2' on his Instagram in November, it was heard. He was subsequently arrested again.
The trial continues.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
LA protests far different from '92 Rodney King riots
The images of cars set ablaze, protesters tossing rocks at police and officers firing nonlethal rounds and tear gas at protesters hearkens back to the last time a president sent the National Guard to respond to violence on Los Angeles streets. But the unrest during several days of protests over immigration enforcement is far different in scale from the 1992 riots that followed the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King. President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to call in the National Guard after requests from Mayor Tom Bradley and Gov. Pete Wilson. After the current protests began Friday over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of 4,100 National Guard troops and 700 Marines despite strident opposition from Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Trump cited a legal provision to mobilize federal service members when there is 'a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.' California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday saying Trump had overstepped his authority. Outrage over the verdicts on April 29, 1992 led to nearly a week of widespread violence that was one of the deadliest riots in American history. Hundreds of businesses were looted. Entire blocks of homes and stores were torched. More than 60 people died in shootings and other violence, mostly in South Los Angeles, an area with a heavily Black population at the time. Unlike the 1992 riots, protests have mainly been peaceful and been confined to a roughly five-block stretch of downtown LA, a tiny patch in the sprawling city of nearly 4 million people. No one has died. There's been vandalism and some cars set on fire but no homes or buildings have burned. At least 50 people have been arrested for everything from failing to follow orders to leave to looting, assault on a police officer and attempted murder for tossing a Molotov cocktail. Several officers have had minor injuries and protesters and some journalists have been struck by some of the more than 600 rubber bullets and other 'less-lethal' munitions fired by police. The 1992 uprising took many by surprise, including the Los Angeles Police Department, but the King verdict was a catalyst for racial tensions that had been building in the city for years. In addition to frustration with their treatment by police, some directed their anger at Korean merchants who owned many of the local stores. Black residents felt the owners treated them more like shoplifters than shoppers. As looting and fires spread toward Koreatown, some merchants protected their stores with shotguns and rifles.

an hour ago
LA protests far different from '92 Rodney King riots
The images of cars set ablaze, protesters tossing rocks at police and officers firing nonlethal rounds and tear gas at protesters hearkens back to the last time a president sent the National Guard to respond to violence on Los Angeles streets. But the unrest during several days of protests over immigration enforcement is far different in scale from the 1992 riots that followed the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King. President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to call in the National Guard after requests from Mayor Tom Bradley and Gov. Pete Wilson. After the current protests began Friday over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of 4,100 National Guard troops and 700 Marines despite strident opposition from Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Trump cited a legal provision to mobilize federal service members when there is 'a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.' California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday saying Trump had overstepped his authority. Outrage over the verdicts on April 29, 1992 led to nearly a week of widespread violence that was one of the deadliest riots in American history. Hundreds of businesses were looted. Entire blocks of homes and stores were torched. More than 60 people died in shootings and other violence, mostly in South Los Angeles, an area with a heavily Black population at the time. Unlike the 1992 riots, protests have mainly been peaceful and been confined to a roughly five-block stretch of downtown LA, a tiny patch in the sprawling city of nearly 4 million people. No one has died. There's been vandalism and some cars set on fire but no homes or buildings have burned. At least 50 people have been arrested for everything from failing to follow orders to leave to looting, assault on a police officer and attempted murder for tossing a Molotov cocktail. Several officers have had minor injuries and protesters and some journalists have been struck by some of the more than 600 rubber bullets and other 'less-lethal' munitions fired by police. The 1992 uprising took many by surprise, including the Los Angeles Police Department, but the King verdict was a catalyst for racial tensions that had been building in the city for years. In addition to frustration with their treatment by police, some directed their anger at Korean merchants who owned many of the local stores. Black residents felt the owners treated them more like shoplifters than shoppers. As looting and fires spread toward Koreatown, some merchants protected their stores with shotguns and rifles.


The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Why Biden's health cover-up is worse than Watergate
Jake Tapper, one of the co-authors of 'Original Sin,' the inside account of President Joe Biden's decline, told Piers Morgan last month that the cover-up of Biden's health was 'maybe even worse than Watergate.' Except it's not 'maybe.' For more than four years, Biden perpetuated the biggest fraud on the American people in the history of the republic. And all the president's men and women were his co-conspirators. Every day, they told the public that Biden was not just physically and cognitively fine, but that he was in better shape than anyone in the White House. White House officials not only dismissed questions about Biden's age and acuity but claimed he was so fit that he was wearing his staff out. On one of the rare occasions when the liberal media gently inquired about Biden's health, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, told CNN that 'I can't even keep up with him.' This is from the same woman who told the country that videos of Biden falling down and wandering off were 'cheap fakes.' She lied. They all did. All administrations bend the truth. But the Biden team went further than any other. When Special Counsel Robert Hur issued his report last February, in which he noted that Biden had broken the law but that a jury would likely not convict because they would find him to be 'well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,' Biden responded with a tirade against Hur for asking in the interview about when his son Beau had passed away — which Biden could not remember. 'How in the hell dare he raise that?' Biden shouted indignantly. But Hur never asked about it. It was Biden who had brought up Beau's death in a meandering, nonsensical reply to a question about where in his house he had placed classified documents. The rest of the White House piled on Hur, with Kamala Harris leading the charge. She called Hur's description of Biden's faltering memory 'gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.' It was none of those. Everything Hur stated was true. Hur showed enormous restraint and decency in dealing with Biden. How was he rewarded? According to Tapper and Alex Thompson, Hur was blackballed by the legal establishment and could not find a job for months. Even as they were smearing this honest public servant, White House officials continued to peddle the idea that Joe Biden was, at age 81, almost superhuman. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Meet the Press that 'The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused.' No, he wasn't. Biden was largely incapacitated, worked only a few hours a day and couldn't recognize long-term friends and staffers. It wasn't until June 2024, after Biden's debate, that the farce could no longer hold. But even in the wake of that disaster, Biden and company kept lying to everyone, insisting that Biden only had a cold and was still up to the task of running against Trump — and serving another four years. Only after intense pressure from his own party did Biden finally, and reluctantly, drop out. And we know now that Biden likely had cancer. According to a Biden spokesman, Biden last had a prostate specific antigen test 11 years ago. Having compassion for Biden at this time does not preclude asking why he wasn't tested, or if that is simply another lie. House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has announced his committee will ask members of the Biden administration to testify about what they knew and when they knew about Biden's health. The public deserves answers but more than that, those who engaged in the sham need to be held accountable. It's worth remembering that, as a first-term senator from Delaware, while Biden reportedly advocated for fairness and not rushing to judgment, he demanded accountability from President Nixon during the Watergate affair and ultimately called for Nixon's resignation. There is a key difference between Nixon and Watergate and Biden and his decline. While Nixon certainly tried to limit the fallout from the Watergate break-in, he did not know of, order, or approve the Watergate break-in. He only learned of it after the burglars were arrested. Biden, on the other hand, from the beginning of his presidency, orchestrated his administration's malfeasance. From the moment he announced his candidacy in 2019, Biden was deliberately lying to the country when he claimed he was in great health. He also insisted that all his aides repeat that canard. None of this was true, but thanks to a compliant media, which Nixon certainly did not have during Watergate, he was shielded from the public. By 2024, he was working a few days a day, a couple of days a week, and was clearly not in charge of the White House or the country. That was criminal. For at least a year, likely longer, the U.S. did not have a functioning president, and the president's men and women knew it. Yet they lied and covered it up. And that is far, far worse than Watergate. Justin Coffey is a professor of history at Quincy University.