IT HAS been described as one of the worst cases of stalking the Metropolitan Police has ever had to investigate.

Obsessed Maria Marchese, who terrorised psychiatrist Dr Jan Falkowski and his then-fiancee Deborah Pemberton, of Poole, was this week convicted of a callous and cruel campaign of harassment.

Marchese plagued the couple, who have since split up, with terrorising texts, emails and phone calls.

Miss Pemberton was threatened that an SAS gunman would kill her on her wedding day, set for September 6, 2003. Another message chillingly read that she would be "burnt down in her wedding dress".

The day before the ceremony, Sharon Malins, the former head chef at the Salterns Hotel in Poole, where the reception was booked, received texts saying people would die if the celebrations went ahead.

"Sharon please Falkowski-Pemberton wedding can't take place, food has been poisoned, guests will be dead," one read.

Frightened guests decided not to attend.

Fearful and distraught, the couple who met through powerboat racing cancelled the wedding.

Miss Pemberton broke down in court as she spoke of her anguish, which began in October 2002.

The 35-year-old accountant told how she thought about killing herself after receiving up to 10 threats a day.

She described the ordeal as "a living hell". She told the jury: "At one point I contemplated suicide. When you've lived in fear of your life for a year it nearly costs you your job, it costs you your relationship, when they have threatened to kill your family, when they have taken everything away from you, until there is nothing left to give and nowhere else to go, I thought that if maybe I put a stop to it all, she couldn't hurt me any more.

"I did nothing wrong, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, dating the wrong person."

Marchese, 45, who met Dr Falkowski when he treated her partner in the late 1990s, was arrested in Poole on the couple's planned wedding day, but the case against her was dropped three months later.

She later told police the doctor had drugged and raped her in his office at St Clement's Hospital in East London and she even rifled through his bins to find a condom to obtain a DNA sample for evidence.

Dr Falkowski fought to clear his name for 18 months until last August when prosecutors turned their attentions to Marchese.

She was convicted of harassment, making threats to kill and perverting the course of justice at Southwark Crown Court and will be sentenced next month.