Neighbour from hell banned from town forever for calling locals ‘cannibal Nazis’
A "neighbour from hell" was called "evil" and "vile" as he was banned from a town for life after tormenting locals as old as 90 almost every day.
Peter Johnson, 58, waged "psychological war" against his neighbours in Alsager, Cheshire, in a campaign of hate that left the victims terrified.
Johnson threatened to stab one of his victims with a carving knife and sent an obituary notice to an elderly neighbour claiming they had died and celebrating their death.
He sent defamatory letters to the victims' bosses, GPs and others with untrue accusations relating to cannibalism, paedophilia, Nazi collaboration, bestiality, terrorism, Aids, drug addiction and homosexuality.
Johnson claimed one of the victims had Aids and bombarded elderly victims with unsolicited funeral director brochures through the post, CheshireLive reports.
Johnson pleaded guilty to five counts of stalking involving serious alarm/distress at Chester Crown Court.
He was jailed on Tuesday for two years and four months and banned from returning to Alsager even though he owns a house in the town.
The ban is part of a lifetime restraining order that prohibits him from contacting his five victims or anyone in relation to them.
Johnson launched his campaign of psychological vigilante justice after being accused of assaulting one of his five victims in 2002.
The case was dropped but he began targeting people who gave evidence against him.
Neighbours were threatened in the street, and on one occasion he swung a metal bar around and paced up and down his driveway whilst gesturing towards victims, who were inside their home.
In other incidents he drove a circle around a victim in a golf club car park and stalked the person around a supermarket.
The malicious letters with untrue accusations were sent to the victims' GPs, workplaces and even a Royal Air Force base.
In the defamatory letters, Johnson claimed to be the victim or a worried associate.
One of the letters to a GP surgery claimed a victim had sexually abused his son.
One of the victims was investigated by counter-terror police due to one of the letters, and was banned from engaging with or working near children or vulnerable people.
The claims were investigated and proved to be unfounded.
Cheshire police found that some of the letters had been written and printed out by Johnson at the local library.
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Police Constable Collette Cook, the officer in charge of the investigation, said: “This neighbour from hell made his victims’ lives a misery, tormenting some of them on an almost daily basis.
“It is one of the worst cases of its kind that we have ever dealt with at Cheshire Constabulary. He left victims, including one in their 90s, worried about leaving their homes, answering their phones and looking at their mail.
“Johnson waged psychological war on those who had given evidence against him in relation to an accusation of assault in 2002.
“This psychological war began with things like needlessly parking in front of victims’ houses, waving frantically and grinning at them and staring into their homes for long periods and has escalated to serious stalking offences between January 2018 and March 2019.
“Once these offences were reported to us we investigated Johnson’s activities and proved that he was responsible for abusive phone calls and letters that victims received.
“He subsequently pleaded guilty to stalking offences involving each of the five victims and the extent of his offending is reflected in the severity of the sentence he has received.
“We are delighted that he is now behind bars facing the consequences of his actions and has been given a lifetime restraining order prohibiting him from going into Alsager upon his release or making any sort of contact in relation to any of the victims.
“I hope that the sentence that has been handed out by Chester Crown Court deters others from committing similar offences and enables the victims in this case to move forward with their lives.”
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