Baby Reindeer: Another couple claiming to have been stalked by Martha have spoken out

Baby Reindeer has blown up on Netflix over the last few weeks, with the woman accused of being the “real-life” Martha even speaking out about her side of the story. 

But now a couple have come out and claimed that they were also stalked by “Martha” for five years and shared details of the whole ordeal.

Speaking to the Mail, Lawyer Laura Wray said she “recognised” Martha from her own experience after watching Baby Reindeer.

“I know Martha by her real name, but my jaw dropped watching the series,” she said.

“It brought so many things back to me that I’d forgotten. She did the same to me, made my life a nightmare. He [Gadd] has got her spot-on. His reaction was exactly the same as mine. I felt sorry for her. Everybody she’s come across and pestered the life out of has felt the same, it seems.”

Laura met the woman when she was persuaded to give her a two-week trial at her company in 1997. “She told me a real hard-luck story about how she had no family support and how she got her law degree and was looking for a traineeship, but nobody would give her one,” says Laura.

“I had my reservations. She was terribly upfront, telling me all this very personal stuff. But basically, I felt sorry for her.”

But once she started, Laura explained, she was rude to everyone, throwing books across the room and shouting at her secretary.

“Then she began threatening people and screaming, like in Baby Reindeer when she goes from being quite pleasant to shouting, ‘Don’t speak to me like that!”

“She did the same [in my office] and I told her, ‘We’re a business I can’t have that kind of behaviour.’ I fired her after a week. She was furious and threatened that she’d do this, that and the other to me.”

“Some of the girls in the office were shaking and upset and thought she was going to attack me or some of the other staff. Eventually, she was escorted out, still calling me vile names, and was later spotted circling the office in her car.”

It got so bad she was forced to issue the staff at her office with panic alarms.

Soon after she was harassing Laura with threatening phone calls saying “I’ll get you” and even left a message on her MP’s answering machine threatening to kill her husband, who was at the time the MP for Glasgow Baillieston, Jimmy Wray.

But things escalated when she started a course at the University of Strathclyde and on the first day bumped into her stalker.

“She kept turning up now and again at lectures I went to. She was just suddenly there. Quite a few times she came and stood beside me as students waited for the lecture room doors to open. I have recollections of her right next to me – almost breathing over me. It was very unnerving, and I was frightened. I had to get some of the other students to walk me to my car.”

She went to the university who revealed she had been excluded from the university for her behaviour towards students and staff.

But Laura finally drew the line in April 2002 when she arrived home with their four-year-old son Frankie to two social workers at her door.

“She had claimed we hit our son and I was forced to explain all the background,” Laura says. “The social workers thankfully believed me but it was just dreadful, and I was absolutely furious.

“This is a child who couldn’t walk or speak, couldn’t do anything for himself. To think that someone could suggest we would do this is vicious and cruel. It was all well and good to write someone off as mentally ill and just ignore the harassment. But the final thing was Frankie, and I wasn’t having that.”

Laura applied to the courts for a restraining order, which was granted the following day.

Now speaking about Baby Reindeer, Laura said: ‘They could have changed things without diluting the content, but they’ve made it so realistic.

“They have portrayed her absolutely spot on, it is so obviously the woman who stalked me. It is so uncanny.”

But the woman who people have accused of being the real Baby Reindeer has anonymously spoken out, claiming that she’s the “victim”.

Speaking to the Daily Record she said: “I’m the victim here, not Richard Gadd.” “I’ve had death threats as a result of his show despite the fact that a lot of the things he claimed are just not true.”

“Someone online said, ‘If I find you I will kill you’. A guy in North Carolina said that he and other people were going to stalk me like I am supposed to have stalked Gadd. I got two hours sleep last night. I thought, what if his supporters really do things like that?”

“I was in Richard Gadd’s company on occasions but I didn’t stalk him like he claims. His story is that this is a gross intrusion into my privacy. I haven’t seen him for 12 years.”

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• ‘I’m the victim here’: Woman accused of being Baby Reindeer’s real-life Martha speaks out

• Still reeling from Baby Reindeer? You need to watch these movies and TV shows next

• ‘Honestly, I expected backlash’: Richard Gadd speaks on Baby Reindeer’s staggering success