Kidnappers handcuffed victim and put him in car with flashing blue lights, court told

Caernarfon Crown Court was told a kidnapper had been dressed as a policeman, during the episode between Welshpool and Oswestry.

John Philpotts, prosecuting, said the victim had been in a vehicle when a black Audi also pulled up on his driveway. He told the court there were three men who he thought were undercover officers.

"They shouted 'police - get out of the vehicle'," he said.

Mr Philpotts said the car used by the kidnappers had been stolen months earlier from outside a house at Hawarden, near Chester. The owner had bought it from a dealership where Nathan Parry had been a car valet - and only one of the two keys given to the buyer fitted the Audi.

"Whoever had stolen the car had been in possession of a key," the prosecutor alleged.

Parry, 37, of Jack's Wood, Ellesmere Port, and Natalie Goode, 33, of Willow Road, Lache, Chester - who was accused of collecting a ransom from the victim's mother - denied kidnapping, false imprisonment and blackmail.

Parry also denied intimidating the man.

Opening the case, Mr Philpotts told the jury :"You may think the story I am about to tell you sounds rather like the plot of a television police drama. But there's a difference because those programmes are made for entertainment, they involve actors, no-one actually gets hurt.

"But this case is about real people, real fear and suffering."

Mr Philpotts said two men had pleaded guilty to their parts in the events last September which began when the victim returned home to the Mid Wales village of Llanymynech between Welshpool and Oswestry.

During his ordeal the man had been allegedly warned that they wanted cash or he would be killed with a heroin injection, and had been blindfolded. He had also been threatened with being shot in a warehouse at Birkenhead, the jury heard.

The man, it was claimed, had been told his movements had been tracked for the previous few months.

Mr Philpotts said the victim's mother - a businesswoman - took thousands of pounds from her safe. She left her house and as she approached the pavement two figures came "from the shadows."

Goode, the prosecutor said, was handed a carrier bag of cash. The defendant later denied to police that she knew about the kidnap and understood she was collecting a debt.

Mr Philpotts claimed there was "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" implicating Parry.

The victim denied a suggestion by Parry's counsel Gareth Roberts that he met him through drugs. He had never met Parry before, the man insisted in evidence. "I didn't think I was coming back alive," the witness added.

Mr Roberts asked:"Were you perhaps part of this plan?"

The witness :"Why would you rob your own family and business?"

The trial continues.