Â鶹Éç

“If you think you’ve lived next to a bad neighbour, this guy took things to a whole new level,” Jennie Aitken says in the radio documentary Neighbour From Hell.

Peter Johnson. Photograph: Cheshire Police

You can pick the house, you can pick the area but you can’t pick your neighbours

Adrian

Jennie is talking about Peter Johnson, of Ivy Lane, Alsager in Cheshire.

A neighbourhood row turned “really bizarre” when Johnson started writing malicious letters about some of the people on his street.

He wrote letters claiming that his neighbours were Nazis, terrorists, child abusers or even that they’d died.

Many of the letters were sent to their places of work or to government bodies – leading to some being investigated by the authorities.

One neighbour, Adrian, tells Jennie that he was investigated by Counter Terrorism Police because of one of Johnson’s letters. Another letter invited people to a Neo-Nazi themed wedding and others were written to local doctors, accusing Adrian of abusing his son.

“It got to the point where some of the customers complained to the company wanting me removed off the work even though I didn’t actually deal with those contracts,” Adrian explains.

Adrian had considered selling his home just to get away from Johnson.

A break through in the case against Johnson came from a local library, where many of the letters were being written. After years of what officers called a “campaign of psychological vigilante justice”, Peter Johnson pleaded guilty to five counts of stalking involving serious alarm or distress at Chester Crown Court.

The judge described what Johnson did as “evil” and “vile”, he was sentenced to more than two-years in prison and was banned from Alsager and his house for the rest of his life.

“You can pick the house, you can pick the area but you can’t pick your neighbours,” Adrian says.

Adrian's story is one of two told in Neighbour from Hell. Originally broadcast on Â鶹Éç Radio Stoke.