'My ex-lover drove me to the brink of suicide': Hairdresser tells of terrifying hate campaign

Sharon McCann, a blonde 46-year-old hairdresser now living in Spain, confessed she came close to throwing herself off a motorway bridge because of his non-stop harassment following her decision to end their romance.

She explained: "I felt like ending it because I could not face life any more. I had lost everything. He said he would never stop loving and wanting me. He warned it would not stop until one of us was dead."

Bloody-minded, father-of-three McNaughton, aged 51, was a man with a criminal history for violence who stopped at nothing to get his own way – as Miss McCann discovered to her cost.

After a trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court, McNaughton was convicted of conspiring to commit criminal damage and remanded in custody. He is due to be sentenced on February 17.

Three years ago he went to jail for six months rather than move a pile of rubbish and in 1987 was locked up for 15 months when his fixation with another former lover led to him attacking the woman and her male friend after a terrifying car chase.

Miss McCann's ill-fated first meeting with McNaughton came outside school.

In 2010 he had a stroke and she reportedly became a temporary director of Refuse Derived Fuel, the recycling business he had launched the previous year. Friends said she played no active role in its running but grateful McNaughton gave her a Rolex in thanks for her kindness during his recovery.

After they parted he took back the watch and other items, including the car registration number WAG1, bought for her during their romance that hit the rocks amid accusations of him cheating on her.

Soon afterwards he was jailed for six months for contempt of court for repeatedly ignoring an order to remove the 40-feet high mountain of rubbish at RDF that became a festering eyesore that dominated the skyline around the site in Moor Street, Brierley Hill, for seven years.

When Miss McCann refused to have him back on his release from prison in early 2014 he bombarded her with increasingly aggressive text messages and phone calls, opened a false Facebook account in her name using as its profile picture a cropped version of a photo of an intimate moment during their romance with which he threatened to leaflet the area around her Hopwood Close, Halesowen home.

He also launched four civil cases against Miss McCann, claiming she owed him tens of thousands of pounds. These resulted in her bank account and assets being frozen, her home repossessed and her furniture locked up. The wrangle remains unresolved.

When she still would not have him back McNaughton masterminded a merciless hate campaign, recruiting 42-year-old Matthew Barker – a man he met in prison – and Barker's friend Joden Smith, 19, to wreck and deface the property of both Miss McCann and members of her family. They were targeted seven times between December 2014 and the following February. Both men admitted their part in the plot.

Her car and that of another family member had windows smashed and tyres slashed on several occasions at both her home and the address of the father of her children. Paint was hurled over the vehicles and the front of her house. Bricks were thrown through her windows at night.

The car of a close family friend was badly damaged and the front of his business was daubed with paint while he was out of the country.

Even the father of Miss McCann had his car vandalised outside his secluded home in Spain near the resort of Alicante. The hate campaign culminated in a terrifying night-time petrol bomb attack on her home in Halesowen on February 1, 2015.

Her car was gutted and the front of the house damaged by the flames.

Both Miss McCann and her mother, who was visiting, were at the property when this occurred but both escaped without physical injury.

The pair were put up in a hotel for their safety and the next day – 15 hours after the attack – Miss McCann saw McNaughton outside a pub in Hagley Road West, Quinton, while she was being driven by officers to a police interview.

He was arrested and minutes later Barker, who lives in Leicestershire, arrived to update McNaughton on the events of the previous evening.

Cell site evidence placed the mobile phone used by Smith at the scene when vandal attacks took place and linked him to Barker who, in turn, was sending text messages to McNaughton whose bank account showed regular payments to his ex-con pal.

McNaughton, of Tenter Drive, Halesowen, who had the numbers of both men stored in his phone under false names, will go to jail with both his life and that of his former lover in ruins.

A close friend of her family said today: "The final straw after all the harassment from him came when she was told she needed a further £40,000 for legal bills after receiving a demand for unpaid mortgage fees on land used by Refuse Derived Fuel in Brierley Hill before it went into liquidation.

"She knew she did not have the money and lost the plot. She did not defend the action, which we believe she could have done successfully, did not tell her parents about the mess she was in and lost the case which has left her facing a £80,000 bill.

"She was in such a bad state she became suicidal but friends and family helped her on the road to recovery. She is in a much better place now. She still suffers from depression but puts a brave face on it. All her friends wish McNaughton dead."