A 37-year-old man accused of kidnapping, false imprisonment and blackmail told a jury about his criminal past and admitted that he’d been a cannabis dealer while working as a car valeter for a Chester motor dealership.
He told his barrister he’d had a seven year sentence for robbery in 2002 and one of nine years in 2006.
“Basically I didn’t have any morals, didn’t care,” Nathan Parry of Jack’s Wood, Ellesmere Port, explained in evidence at Caernarfon Crown Court. “I have a bad record and wish I could go back and change my life.”
However he denied being involved in the kidnapping, false imprisonment, blackmail and intimidation of a 33-year-oild man on the Powys-Shropshire border last September.
Blindfolded and handcuffed
He claimed he knew the victim “through drugs” though the man has denied any involvement in drugs or a turf war. Parry insisted he wasn’t the third man in the kidnap, in which the prosecution allege that the victim was blindfolded and handcuffed and put in a black stolen Audi in which there were two bogus policemen.
John Philpotts, prosecuting, has told the jury that the story is “more like a television police drama”.
According to the prosecution the Audi had pulled up in his driveway between Oswestry and Welshpool.
Parry said that because of his cannabis activities he changed his mobile phones every two or three weeks. He had not been the person who threatened the victim earlier this year by phone.
Involved in drugs
Asked by defence counsel Gareth Roberts if he had anything to do with the kidnap he replied: “I did not have anything to do with it.”
He was questioned at length by Mr Philpotts about various phone calls. Parry said: “I admit being involved in drugs. I don’t like it but I’m doing it to prove my innocence.”
Two men have pleaded guilty to their part in the events but Parry denied he was using one of them “as a convenient person to blame everything on”.
Natalie Goode, 33, of Willow Road, Lache, Chester also pleads not guilty to kidnapping, false imprisonment and blackmail. The case, before Judge Philip Harris-Jenkins, continues on Monday.
