In potentially one of the most fucked up attempts ever at getting an ex-boyfriend to give a shit about you, a Hampshire-based actress faked her own kidnapping. Yeah, she basically pulled a Gone Girl. Except no one can pull a Gone Girl quite like Gone Girl. Nor should you want to.
Twenty-two-year-old Jessica Lind, from Romsey, Hampshire, concocted a plot in which she was found dazed and confused in the back of a car in a country lay-by after allegedly being kidnapped. A text message to her ex-boyfriend that read ‘Let the games begin – find Jess,’ kicked off a major police search, which ran up to 253 hours and cost £15,000 in taxpayers’ money.
Once found, Lind insisted she had been kidnapped and hit over the head by a man who approached her in a coffee shop. An innocent man named John Hodgson, who allegedly suffers from mental health problems, was arrested and held for 15 hours on suspicion of stalking and kidnap before being released.
Lind later confessed at Southampton Crown Court that she’d sent the message herself and driven into the lay-by because she wanted her ex to fear for her welfare and ‘look after her,’ saying she thought ‘he would be able to look after me because he thought someone was going to hurt me.’
In court it was revealed that the break-up had caused her to suffer mental health problems, including depression, suicidal thoughts and a borderline personality disorder. As a result, she was only sentenced for wasting police time as opposed to a heftier charge of perverting the course of justice.
She’s been sentenced to four months in prison, suspended for two years, and 120 hours of unpaid work.
There’s a lesson in this somewhere, though, and it goes a little something like the age old saying: ‘Let him go, if he comes back he’s yours, if he doesn’t then fuck him and definitely don’t pretend to have gotten kidnapped or hurt yourself in any way because he obviously doesn’t deserve you.’
OK, maybe that’s not exactly it, but you get the picture.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.