Cork woman living in fear ahead of crazed stalker’s prison release

Steele was arrested when he was about to break into Una’s house and was found in possession of several items, including duct tape, ropes and a dildo wrapped in a condom strapped to his body.

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A terrified woman says she is going to be “a wreck” when her crazed stalker is released from prison in a few weeks’ time.

Evil James Steele is set to released in April after serving three years and nine months for stalking Una Ring.

Steele was arrested when he was about to break into Una’s house and was found in possession of several items, including duct tape, ropes and a dildo wrapped in a condom strapped to his body.

Brave Una helped in the campaign to make stalking a criminal offence in this country since last November. Her nightmare began four years ago in her hometown of Youghal, Co Cork.

She had just been promoted to office manager and Steele was known to her at the time. He called Una and told her there was going to be an open day the following day and he’d meet up with her.

“I just thought I’d show up and give him a hand,” she says.

“We went to the conference room and there was nothing there but a table. There was nobody around. He put his arms around me very quickly. He had my arms pinned and he started trying to kiss me.

“I said ‘stop’. He said ‘it’s only a kiss’. I said about three or four times ‘I don’t want this’ and he kept saying ‘you won’t know unless you try’.

“I managed to move my hands up and shove him back. I didn’t want to anger him. I said ‘you’re a very nice man but I’m just not interested in a relationship with anybody’. I said ‘look James, I really need to go’.”

The next day Steele texted her and apologised. She told him she wanted to forget about it and not to contact her again.

But that started off a bombardment of messages.

“I didn’t reply to any of them until he said he was going to come to my house,” Una remembers. “I replied to that one and said ‘don’t come to my house, don’t contact me again’.

Several days later she got her first physical warning.

“My daughter came in and said ‘your tyres are pink’.

“I thought of him straight away. It was the first thing that came into my mind,” Una says.

“Less than a week later there was ‘x’s’ and ‘o’s’ painted on the window. ‘I win’ was painted on the window sill.”

Una then got a menacing note under her windscreen wiper, with two condoms in an envelope. It read: “Hello neighbour. I hope you are feeling horny. It’s time we meet and have some fun. I’ve left two condoms in your wallet. I will bring more as we need them. Can you leave your back door open so I can quietly call upstairs. I am watching you.”

Una says: “After the first letter I decided then I would go to the guards.”

She was advised by gardaí to get cameras on her house and to let them know of further developments. A second letter then arrived with a threat to rape Una and her daughter.

“It was a major escalation,” she says. “You feel so out of your depth.”

Una started wiping down her banister every night so if Steele broke in and killed her he might leave fingerprints.

“That they’d have a better chance of getting evidence. I was preparing for my murder,” she admits.

Gardaí monitoring her house on the evening of July 27, 2020 arrested Steele on the driveway next door to Una’s home.

“He had a lot of stuff on him. He had latex gloves on him. He had a lockpicking device. He had a crowbar, duct tape, he had a rope. He had a dildo strapped to him with a condom on it. I believe he would have killed me,” she says.

In February 2021, Steele pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal damage, harassment, possession of articles with intent to commit a robbery and an intended robbery with the intention to commit rape.

Una, who opens up about her ordeal alongside two other victims of stalking, Eve McDowell and Jarlath Rice, in the Virgin Media programme Stalked, says the ordeal has left a lasting effect on her. She is now sadly counting down the days to his release in April.

“I will be a wreck when he comes out,” she says.“I know he will be under strict supervision. He will on five years’ probation once he’s released. It will be strict probation. He will be monitored very, very closely. But five years will pass and that probation period will be over.“

Stalked is on Virgin Media One tomorrow at 9pm.