'Like the plot of a television police drama' - Man found guilty of kidnap on Shropshire border
A man was yesterday found guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and blackmail near Oswestry which has been described as being "like the plot of a television police drama".
A 33-year-old man living in the Oswestry-Welshpool area had been handcuffed, driven off and blindfolded in the Audi which had been taken a few months earlier from outside a house at Hawarden, near Chester.
Giving evidence at Caernarfon Crown Court, his mother told how she'd received a panic-stricken mobile phone call from her son at midnight telling her to take cash from her safe and hand it to someone who would be calling.
She took £5,000 from her own business and £6,000 belonging to her son and handed it in a plastic bag when a man – "with a strong Scouse accent" – and woman, alleged to have been Natalie Goode, turned up outside her home.
When her husband inquired about their son the man replied: "He'll be all right – don't come near me."
Later her husband took a call from their son and when they got to him he was in a terrible state, in agony because handcuffs wouldn't come off. Police were called.
Nathan Parry, 37, of Jack's Wood, Ellesmere Port, had denied the offences. A jury took eight hours and 12 minutes to convict him by a ten-to-two majority. He was remanded in custody.
Goode, 33, of Willow Road, Lache, Chester, was cleared of kidnapping and false imprisonment but convicted of blackmail.
She was bailed for a pre-sentence report. Both will be sentenced later with two other men who admitted their roles in the events last September.
The victim had denied his ordeal was "part of some kind of turf war between different drugs gangs".
Prosecutor John Philpotts told the jury they might think the events of September 2 "sound rather like the plot of a television police drama".
But the case involved "real people and real fear".
The victim had, the court heard, been warned that his kidnappers wanted cash or he would be killed with a heroin injection.
He had also been threatened with being shot in a warehouse at Birkenhead, and was told his movements had been tracked for the previous few months.
Judge Philip Harris-Jenkins warned Goode "isn't to read anything into the fact I am ordering a report".
