Nicola Sturgeon 'shocked' to learn Myleene Klass stalker sent her letter signed in blood

Peter Windsor was found guilty on Tuesday of causing serious alarm and distress to Ms Klass and fellow Classic FM presenter Katie Breathwick between 2020 and 2024.

During the trial of the 61-year-old it also emerged Windsor had sent two letters to the former First Minister, one that he claimed was signed in his own blood.

Ms Sturgeon told an audience at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall that she had known nothing of the incident until she saw newspaper headlines.

The SNP MSP said she had not read the detail too closely “for understandable reasons”.

Windsor, of Birmingham, had posted Ms Klass items that included a gun, handcuffs, a will-writing kit and a police uniform.

He sent the blood-signed letter to Ms Sturgeon in 2020, in which he “pledged his soul to Satan”.

Windsor had been arrested at the time but a decision was taken not to prosecute him.

Ms Sturgeon said: “I only found out about that when I saw it in a newspaper headline last week, which did give me a bit of a shock when I read it.

“For obvious reasons, I didn't really look too much at the detail of it.

“I'm guessing that happened while I was still First Minister, so the people around me did their job that letter never arrived with me.

“Certainly I didn't see it.”

She said she was far more aware of her safety now no longer have the protections of the office of First Minister.

“When you're not in high government office, you don't have somebody doing these kind of things,” she said, referring to checking her post.

“Me right now would far more chance of it getting to me than it would have done beforehand.

“People who love me, they worry much more about this kind of stuff than I do, because I've just got to get on with my life.”

Ms Sturgeon said women must not be deterred from entering public life because “then we'll leave it all to men again for the future of the world”.

She added that politics was more toxic now than at any point in her career and “more dangerous”.

Ms Sturgeon added: “In the society we live in today, we've all got to think about how words have potential consequences.

“So that's not an argument for shutting down the debate.

“It's an argument for all of us, me included, to think much more carefully about how we conduct ourselves in debate and to do it civilly with respect.

“I reflect a lot on that in my own conduct now, much more than I ever did before.”