A POP culture convention planned for April has come unstuck with the head organiser in jail, as patrons demand to know what has happened to the tickets they bought last year.

Townsville Comic Con was due to be held on April 23 but its organiser, Charles Kennell, is now behind bars in Cairns on charges related to harassing and stalking a police officer.

Kennell has previously run Tropicon in Cairns and had crowdfunded more than $7500 to run a Townsville event, with supporters promised tickets by October last year.

The tickets never went out and then, on December 2, Kennell was arrested in Innisfail and charged with unlawful stalking and using a carriage service to menace after leaving numerous abusive voicemail messages for a police officer on November 20.

Kennell is also accused of making “numerous false and defamatory allegations” against two Cairns police officers on social media and has not been granted bail.

Now the 261 people who put forward funds for Townsville Comic Con have been left out of pocket and angry. Before the news broke of Kennell being in jail, supporters had been told he was in ill in hospital.

Kirwan mother Leonie Jennings bought tickets for her son Richie’s 18th birthday in November. Richie was diagnosed with a rare brain tumour in 2010 and has been unable to travel to pop culture conventions further south.

Ms Jennings said Richie had already been through a lot and she was angry this had happened.

“Some people have said it was a scam,” she said. “I was just waiting to see what happened. I want my tickets, I paid my money.”

Ashley Linklater, of Cairns, was another person who bought a ticket to the event and became suspicious when they never arrived.

Ms Linklater said when she made comments online about what had happened, they were deleted.

“I started saying I think we’ve been conned,” she said. “They’ve got thousands of dollars of people’s money.

“I genuinely don’t think anyone’s going to get anything back.”

A Sydney advertiser, who asked not to be named, said he had been helping Kennell with the event but was now afraid to be associated with him.

“No one’s going touch Tropicon after this,” he said. “He’s ruined his reputation, he’s ruined his name and he’s ruined the name of Tropicon.”

Messages to Tropicon Facebook pages and email address went unanswered and phone numbers associated with the event and Kennell’s business Luigi’s Video Games had been disconnected. The Bulletin also attempted to contact Kennell’s wife Jasmine for comment but received no response.