A MAN who wrote poison pen letters to fellow villagers has died more than 15 years after being jailed for a campaign of abuse that tore the community apart.

Retired academic Dr James Forster was jailed in 2001 after spending more than a decade targeting Manfield residents with a bizarre and apparently motiveless crusade.

Between 1987 and 1999, Dr Forster bombarded people in the village, between Darlington and Richmond, with almost 200 poison pen letters, posters and threats.

Dr Forster, who was in his 80s when he died, was accused of throwing paint bombs at a house and threatening to drop a bomb down the chimney of a property belonging to an elderly woman who once returned home to find her locks glued shut.

The former Open University lecturer, referred to in the national press as “the archetypal dotty professor”, had long been suspected by local policeman Sgt Mick Griffiths.

A search of his home eventually uncovered evidence that would help to convict him – an incriminating diary, stencilling kit and latex gloves.

The campaign of abuse ended upon Dr Forster’s arrest and, following a trial that thrust the tiny village into the national spotlight, he was convicted at Teesside Crown Court.

Judge David Bryant imposed a four-month jail term – a sentence criticised by victims – and said Dr Forster had destroyed the fabric of the quiet village “cruelly and cunningly”, adding: “A miasma of suspicion must have spread through the lanes of Manfield so that neighbour suspected neighbour and friend began to doubt friend.”

Dr Forster returned to Manfield upon his release, with villagers saying yesterday that the pensioner had lived quietly with his wife until his sudden death last weekend.

Reflecting upon the impact of a case that captured the nation’s attention, one villager said: “It was awful at the time because nobody knew who was behind those letters.

“People were suspecting each other and it divided the village, there were a lot of people affected and it was a difficult time for everyone.”

One man who knew Dr Forster in later life cast doubt upon the academic’s convictions, saying: “In the years I’ve known him, he’s done nothing wrong, he was always nice and polite and I wouldn’t have thought him capable of doing anything like that, though you never know what goes on behind closed doors.”