Hubby tracking wife with iPhone under her car bonnet caught when it started RINGING
Obsessed Kevin Gallagher would turn up to venues where she was by using the app
AN OBSESSED husband stalking his estranged wife using an iPhone tracking device in the bonnet of her car was caught out when it started RINGING.
Kevin Gallagher had been using the phone app to monitor the movements of Rachael Harvey - but he forgot to turn the device on silent.
But the businessman, 39, was caught out when Ms Harvey and teenage daughter Morgan heard a mysterious ringtone coming from inside the car.
The pair were unable to find the source until Morgan, 18, took the Renault Clio to a local garage and a mechanic found the iPhone near the engine under a covered metal section.
Inquiries revealed Gallagher - who runs a property management firm - had been using an iPad to track the iPhone so he could follow and keep his wife under surveillance whenever she was out.
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Gallagher would also turn up to venues where she was by using the app.
The incident was the culmination of a four month stalking campaign by dad-of-one Gallagher during which he bombarded Rachael with text messages, sent her lurid pictures of his private parts and images of her sleeping in various stages of undress, JPs in Manchester were told.
The couple, from Urmston, had married in February 2010 and had a son together but they had a tempestuous relationship.
Mum-of-three Ms Harvey said her husband was 'violent and caused distress' and the split up last year.
Miss Eileen Rogers prosecuting said: ''Mr Gallagher would rip her clothes off of her, punch her which caused an injury to her ribs and gave her a black eye.
"She has said that he was very controlling, and would ask her who she was with and where she was going and continued with this behaviour even during the time she was pregnant.
"His controlling behaviour continued so that she did go out with her friends anymore. She said that she was not mentally strong enough to leave him.
"One evening he went out to work and he failed to return home. She contacted him and told him that she did not what him to come back to the marital home and she was leaving him.”
The iPhone was discovered on December 28 last year and after police investigated the contents of the phone they went to speak to Gallagher.
Miss Rogers added: "Another black iPhone was found concealed in a sock and these phones the police discovered were used by Mr Gallagher to track his partner and her daughter when they travelled in the car and he would turn up at the venue where he knew she was.”
In mitigation defence lawyer Jeremy Spencer said Gallagher’s father ‘has made it clear that he is unable to carry on with their business’ without him.
Gallagher admitted a charge of stalking by sending numerous text messages, making contact via social media and placing a tracking device in her vehicle in order to ascertain her movements.
He was due to be sentenced but fled before it was due to take place.
A warrant was issued for his arrest.
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