'I could have ended up as his dinner. He's a monster': Friend of cannibal jailed for nine years for plot to kill and eat teenage girl tells of moment he tried to suffocate her 

• Urlene King tells of the moment Dale Bolinger tried to drug her at his home
• She had known him 17 years before the sudden attack at his home in 2010
• Her story can be told after he was convicted on 11 charges yesterday 
• Bolinger, 58, had plotted to meet a teenage girl, rape, kill and eat her
• He bought an axe the day before he planned to meet the girl
• He had met the 14-year-old, called 'Eva' on the Dark Fetish Network website
• He chatted online about beheading and eating girls 
• Bolinger found guilty of attempting to meet the girl following grooming
• He was jailed yesterday for 11 offences, including making indecent pictures
• Titles of images included 'Dinner', 'The BBQ', 'The BBQ2' and 'The BBQ3'
• Judge calls his behaviour 'abhorrent, shocking and dangerous'

By LUCY CROSSLEY and DAMIEN GAYLE FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 14:45 GMT, 25 September 2014 | UPDATED: 06:00 GMT, 26 September 2014

A former friend of 'Canterbury Cannibal' Dale Bolinger last night told how 'she's happy to be alive because she could have ended up as his dinner'.

Bolinger tried to drug Urlene King, a mother of four from Tooting, south west London, with a chemical-soaked rag when she visited his home.

She can only now tell her story after the 58-year-old cannibal fetishist was yesterday jailed for nine years over a string of charges including a plot to behead and eat a girl he sexually groomed over the Internet.

Ms King and Bolinger had been friends for 17 years when he one day invited her to his home in Brockley, south east London, and tried to suffocate her with a rag soaked in noxious dry-cleaning fluid as she sat in his lounge.

'I was sitting on the couch with my back to the door when he attacked me,' Ms King told the Daily Mirror. I couldn't breathe and began to feel all giddy - I thought he was trying to rape me.

'I finally broke free and said, "What the f*** do you think you're doing?"

'He staggered back and said, "Oh my God what have I done." But he looked different, nothing like the Dale I knew.'

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