Day 41, Part 2: Charlie Brooks may have threatened to sue after an estates manager refused to hand back his missing bags, the Old Bailey heard yesterday. Neil Perkins, a porter at the Chelsea Harbour residential complex, said he thought he heard an irritated Mr Brooks issue the warning on 18 July 2011.
A short while earlier a cleaner had found the leather briefcase and laptop bag in the flats’ underground car park and handed them to his supervisor, who took them to the front office. There, the estates manager, Alan Ramsey – aware of Rebekah Brooks’s arrest the previous day – stowed them into a back room.
Alerted by Mr Perkins, who had discovered Mr Brooks’s associates apparently searching for the bags behind the car park bins, Mr Brooks then went to the front office to retrieve his property. Mr Perkins said: “Mr Ramsey said something like: ‘Go back to your apartment and I’ll call you in 20 minutes to discuss it.”
Asked what he had overheard Mr Brooks saying, Mr Perkins said: “I think he made some kind of annoyance statement like: ‘I’ll sue them’, but I didn’t really get the gist of what the situation was at the time.”
Mr Ramsey promptly reported the discovery of the bags to Fulham police station, ultimately leading to Mr Brooks, his wife and News International’s head of security, Mark Hanna being charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Police inventories of the contents of the bags were flashed briefly onto the courtroom monitors. They included a laptop computer, an iPod, dicataphone, USB stick, power cables, a hardback notebook, unopened correspondence, and an official programme to the Royal Box at Wimbledon from a few days earlier.
Also included were a 50p piece, a conker, a toothbrush, a bottle of homeopathic medicine, the May 2011 newsletter of the British KuneKune Pig Society, and seven DVDs whose titles included ‘Instant Lesbian’, ‘Bride of Sin’ and ‘Lesbian Psychodrama: Volume 2 and Volume 3′.
Mr Brooks, Mrs Brooks and Mr Hanna deny plotting to pervert the course of justice by hiding evidence from police. The case continues
Further Reports of Day 41:
- Phone-hacking trial: One bag, two bags, three bags full, James Doleman, The Drum
- Phone-hacking trial jury told of porn videos and computers in bags, Nick Davies, The Guardian
- Phone-hacking Trial: Those Brooks’ ‘mislaid’ bags and their contents, #pressreform
- Contents of bags allegedly concealed by Charlie Brooks revealed, Lisa O’Carroll, The Guardian
A full Round Up of tweets and links can be found on the #pressreform blog, “Phone Hacking Trial, Day 41″
Reblogged this on Vox Political.
Reblogged this on The Greater Fool.