Hoghton Tower and the Private Investigator

Within days of launching the Hoghton Tower campaign a female campaigner started receiving unsolicited letters either from someone using a fake name (e.g. Gerald Grosvenor) or anonymously.

The letters were predominately long-winded pro-shoot diatribe mixed with sad attempts at humour. One anonymous letter, a long rant about a councillor’s support for the campaign, was sent ‘because the paper refused to publish it.’ Not being the brightest spark on the planet he hadn't realised that letter's don't get printed immediately.

The following week a heavily edited version of his letter appeared in the paper complete with his name and address. The letters were being sent by:

Anthony Gerard Fisher a private investigator from near Preston.

And according to an email received from Tony Fisher (8 July 2006):

I was privileged to shoot the Tower back in 2004... the welcoming coffee and cake from Sir Bernard...

Seriously, what type of person sends anonymous letters to opponents and sends the same letter to newspapers complete with their name and address?

Having failed to get any reaction he started e-mailing instead, once using his own name but mostly calling himself ‘Trevor Greene’. To give you an idea of what type of person we are dealing with, one message started with:

“I am reliably informed that your balaclava clad shitheads...”

By this stage his unsolicited e-mails were becoming more frequent. An expert on preventing cyber stalking advised the campaigner not to reply at all as it just feeds their need for attention, so the e-mails went unanswered.

Not getting the response he wanted, he turned his attention to abusing a petition site against the Hoghton Tower shoot. He would be on it at all times of day posting messages always aimed at the female campaigner. He would post messages about what she was wearing for work, or what car she was driving or post her address for everyone to see.

Some of the details he was posting could only have come from the Hoghton Tower shoot or the police. Details about the Larsen Traps for example had never been made public. Lancashire police state that the only connection between Tony Fisher and the police is Wildlife Liaison Officer Pc Duncan Thomas who Fisher contacted once to report an incident a few years previous.

Quite why Fisher was targeting the female campaigner we don’t know, but some of his letters also mentioned other female campaigners from other groups.

One evening the female campaigner was on the Hoghton Tower estate looking to see if the duck shoot had taken place during the day. Within minutes of arriving she received threatening and abusive texts from someone claiming to be from Hoghton. Initially it was assumed they were coming from a gamekeeper who was watching her from his vehicle at the time. When policed traced the number they found it was registered to private investigator Tony Fisher.

Now it might be a just coincidence that Fisher started texting within minutes of her being seen by Hoghton Tower shoot staff, but that doesn't explain how he knew about the leafleting she had just been doing minutes earlier.

The solicitor for the campaigner asked her who she suspected had hired the private investigator. That's a very interesting question which is impossible for us to answer. As of 2010 the harassment of the female campaigner continues simply because she campaigns against the Hoghton Tower shoot.