A victim of a male NHS nurse dubbed “the Canterbury Cannibal” has spoken of the moment he tried to suffocate her with a cloth soaked in dry-cleaning fluid.
Urlene King, 52, feared she could have ended up as her former friend Dale Bolinger’s “dinner” after he placed the cloth over her face at his home in July 2010.
She told the Daily Mirror: “I felt a hand over my head and something cold on my face. I remember struggling to get him to let go. He was suffocating me.”
Ms King, of Tooting, south west London, added: “I feel happy to be alive because I could have ended up as his dinner. He’s a monster.”
Bolinger, 58, was jailed for nine years yesterday by a judge who described his behaviour as “abhorrent, shocking and dangerous”.
At Canterbury Crown Court, Judge Adele Williams said the incident had caused former youth worker Ms King long-term psychological effects.
US national Bolinger - an ex-registered nurse at the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate, Kent - pleaded guilty to administering a poison or noxious substance.
In addition, he was found guilty following a trial of sexual grooming after plotting to behead and eat a person purporting to be a girl of 14 he met online.
His trial heard that he bought an axe from a DIY store in Broadstairs, Kent, the day before he tried to meet the girl, said to be a Mexican called “Eva” living in Germany.
But jurors heard that “Eva”, whose true identity has never been uncovered, failed to turn up at Ashford International station as planned.
Bolinger also pleaded guilty to making indecent pseudo photographs of children, and seven counts of publishing an obscene article.
Calling himself “meatmarketman”, he discussed online with various people - including a former New York police officer - kidnap, sexual abuse, torture, murder and cannibalism.
Jailing him, Judge Williams told him: “You lack any insight into your behaviour and fail to understand that right-minded people will find your behaviour abhorrent, shocking, repulsive and dangerous.”
