Baby Reindeer 2.0: Perth woman convicted of stalking two lawyers

Kobi Langshaw, now barred from coming within 2km of the Perth CBD, was ‘completely infatuated’ with one man while harbouring a hatred for another in a case reminiscent of the hit Netflix series.

Kobi Langshaw, inset, was convicted of stalking two Perth lawyers, in a case reminiscent of Netflix series Baby Reindeer.

A woman has been convicted of multiple counts of aggravated stalking towards two Perth lawyers in a case reminiscent of the hit Netflix television show Baby Reindeer.

Kobi Langshaw on Wednesday was convicted of stalking Patrick Gardner and Aaron Herbert over the course of several months in 2020. She has been barred from going within 2km of the Perth CBD, where both men work, while the court considers her sentence.

Magistrate Belinda Coleman took more than three hours to read out the reasons behind her decision, detailing the more than 20 times Langshaw breached VROs and the extraordinary lengths she went to in an effort to encounter the men.

Mr Gardner had acted for Langshaw in a Family Court matter for just over a month and a half in late 2015 and early 2016. A pattern of behaviour began soon after that then led Mr Gardner and Mr Herbert to take out VROs against her. Ms Coleman said it was clear Langshaw was, and continued to be, “completely infatuated” with Mr Gardner while harbouring a hatred for Mr Herbert that “bordered on the pathological”.

She described how Langshaw had breached the VROs in multiple ways, including loitering near their offices and in the cafes they frequented before work and during lunch. The woman would also walk each day down the street that Mr Gardner drove along on his way to work, and developed a walking route that skirted the perimeter of the 200m exclusion area surrounding Mr Gardner’s home.

In two particularly disturbing incidents, Langshaw was found to have breached the restraining ­orders when she drove her black Suzuki Swift around and in front of each of the men as they drove towards the city. Ms Coleman noted that Langshaw had changed the number plate on her car on multiple occasions during the period of offending.

She found that Langshaw’s ­efforts to explain away each of the incidents as “chance encounters” were often based on outright lies.

The woman, Ms Coleman said, had an “uncanny ability” to engineer opportunities to watch or cross paths with Mr Gardner and Mr Herbert, and was “terrifyingly aware” of Mr Gardner’s movements in particular.

Ms Coleman also said she had come to the “concrete conclusion” that the pair had never been sexually intimate, describing any suggestion otherwise as a figment of Langshaw’s imagination.

She described how Langshaw remained obsessed with Mr Gardner. “From my observation of Ms Langshaw over the trial, it is clear she was, and still is, completely infatuated with Mr Gardner,” the magistrate said.

She said Langshaw stopped taking notes while Mr Gardner was on the stand, and instead stared at him “with an unrelenting gaze”. Ms Coleman said Langshaw had also let out her hair and had dressed in a manner ­designed to “draw his attention” while he was testifying. “It was very unnerving,” Ms Coleman said.

In Wednesday’s decision, Ms Coleman said she had relied on previous convictions of breaches of the VROs back in 2016 as propensity evidence.

Those earlier convictions stemmed from instances including one occasion when Langshaw sent an email to the president of Mr Gardner’s amateur football club, purporting to be an AFL official and instructing him to present her with an umpiring award at the club’s annual wind-up event. She was stopped from entering the event by friends of Mr Gardner.

She had also breached an order barring her from setting foot inside the Family Court building where Mr Herbert worked. She secured a job as a legal clerk at a law firm across the road from the firm where Mr Gardner practised, and also leased a CBD apartment near the office and a house close to the Caversham homes of both men.

Langshaw’s sentencing was ­delayed pending the receipt of medical reports.

Ms Coleman said she wanted medical reports to clarify whether there were any diagnosed or undiagnosed conditions that may have contributed to Langshaw’s behaviour, and whether there was a risk that her behaviour would continue or escalate. Both men have also been asked to prepare victim impact statements.

Last year, Langshaw was convicted in Kalgoorlie on one count of stalking with intent to intimidate. That conviction reportedly related to her communications with a woman, in which she ­described fantasies of a relationship with the woman’s husband.

The nature of Langshaw’s ­behaviour evokes that shown in the Netflix series Baby Reindeer. The series, by comedian Richard Gadd, describes his experiences of being allegedly harassed and followed by a woman who met him at a London bar where he worked.

Scottish woman Fiona Harvey last week outed herself as the woman the stalker character on which Baby Reindeer’s Martha was based but denied many of the events depicted in the series.