Man arrested after threatening to kidnap influencer and discussing sexual fantasies, leaving her 'depressed'

Rob Keating, aged 39, had harassed 33-year-old Alexandra Saper online for almost a year prior to being arrested.

Keating allegedly sent “incessant and constant” emails and video messages to Alexandra, where he talked about his sexual fantasies and threatened to abduct her from her from Bali.

Alexandra is a former lawyer turned travel influencer who now makes money from her Instagram page 'The Wayfaress'. The social media star claimed she has been forced to flee from the Indonesian country where she once lived in fear.

Keating, who has been charged with two counts of stalking involving serious alarm or distress, is now on trial at Portsmouth Crown Court. He has denied the charges against him, as reported by MailOnline.

He allegedly became convinced there was something between himself and the Alexandra and booked a one-way ticket to see her Bali. He messaged her to say “flights booked baby girl”. Then, after he arrived on the island, he messaged her again. This time, he told her: “You're never getting rid of me”, which left her “very scared”.

Keating is a traffic worker who was living in his sister's garage in Havant, Hampshire, at the time of the alleged offences between 2022 and 2023. Opening the case, prosecutor Alexandra Bull told the court that he frequently posted on social media and Youtube.

He started following Alexandra on Instagram in 2022, and sent her a “weird and creepy” message in July of that year to which she replied: “Dude, why are you following me if you don't like my content”. She then blocked him.

Keating then found her business email via her website and used this to contact her again. “Thereafter, the contact became incessant and constant,” Bull told the court.

The influencer tried to block Keating's emails, but they went to her junk folder. Alexandra then deleted the emails from this folder - but she found they came in “almost every day”.

By later in 2022, the messages became more “intense” and “sexual in nature”, the court heard. In September he recorded a video where he “described having sex with her to some length”, which he sent to her via an email.

Bull told the court: “He was speaking to her as though they were in a relationship, like he was in love with her and she with him.” She added that he said he loved her and wanted to be with her and “he said he would do whatever it takes to make that happen - if that involves kidnapping then so be it”.

In January 2023, he then emailed her to say he would quit his job and “come and find her” in Bali. Alexandra said in a video interview played to the court: “He sent me a photo of a body in a suitcase and said he was going to kidnap me.” She added that he said he knew she was 5ft2ins, and this meant she would “fit inside the suitcase”.

By the time he travelled to Bali, in late January 2023, he had sent the social media star around 30 videos of himself talking to the camera and “hundreds” of other emails. She then saw from posts on his Instagram page which showed that he had visited a bar she regularly went to with her friends, and also went to cafés just 50 metres from her house.

In her video evidence Alexandra went on to say that Keating thought she was sending him secret messages through her Instagram posts. “His interpretation of these posts was that they were secret coded messages about my love for him, or me asking him to come to Bali because I wanted to see him. He was convinced that I had asked him to come to Bali,” she said.

To protect herself, Alexandra booked a Bali hotel room in case he knew where she lived. Once there, she told the court she experienced her first ever panic attack as she worried that he had followed her there. She then stayed at a friend's house in Bali, and later travelled to the South East Asian country of Laos so that they were no longer in the same country.

The star told the court that Keating’s behaviour also affected her work. She had to stop posting on Instagram and also cancel work projects because she was concerned about his belief that she was sending him secret messages.

She said she became “depressed” and stopped leaving the house because of Keating's actions.

The influencer reported him to the police in Bali, and spoke to the US and the UK embassies in the country. He was arrested on his arrival back in the UK in March 2023 said Bull told the court that police found “black rope” in his suitcase.

Keating told police in an interview that he was not sexually attracted to Alexandra, but alleged that “she had shown an interest in him and there could be something there” between them.

He continued to stalk her, however, between September and November 2024, after he moved to Horsham in West Sussex, prosecutors allege. Keating posted a picture of a plane ticket from London to Bali with the caption “round 2” on his Instagram in November. He was subsequently arrested again. The trial continues.