A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
A woman told a detective she wrote a letter changing an earlier formal police statement after a visit from Claude Sheridan’s girlfriend Sarah Thornton, a jury in Gisborne District Court heard yesterday.
It was a handwritten letter, which Thornton delivered to Sheridan’s lawyer’s office.
The witness, Wendy Taylor, did not tell police she wanted to change her statement or alert to them to the letter.
Ms Taylor was giving evidence in Sheridan and Thornton’s trial.
Claude Sheridan, 35, faces 12 charges arising out of alleged incidents on November 26 and 27 last year. Thornton is charged as a party to three of them — demanding with menaces, threatening to kill Robert Legge-Mulley, and theft of a Falcon ute.
The Crown says that shortly after his cousin Chad Sheridan was taken into custody, Claude Sheridan kidnapped Mr Legge-Mulley (a close friend of Chad’s) from Wendy Taylor’s house, where Chad had been staying and had stored belongings in her shed.
Claude also allegedly stole Chad’s Falcon ute, valued at $10,000.
The Crown says Claude Sheridan demanded $5000 from Mr Legge-Mulley, threatened him at knifepoint and threatened his children; that he robbed Chad Sheridan’s friend Samantha Las Vegas of Chad’s Isuzu Bighorn vehicle, which was in her possession at her house in Miro Street and full of her belongings, including a Rottweiler puppy.
Sheridan allegedly forced Mr Legge-Mulley under duress to drive the Bighorn out to his Ormond property and detained him in a shed there overnight.
Thornton’s counsel Michael Lynch (with Stephen Taylor) contends she was not with Sheridan on November 26.
Evidence given by Ms Taylor varied and at times cast doubt on that defence.
From the witness box, Ms Taylor claimed to have asked Claude Sheridan to take Chad’s ute and Bighorn to Ormond for safe keeping because gang members were visiting, wanting to take them.
She initially said Thornton was with Sheridan but later said she only presumed that. Under cross-examination by Mr Lynch, she confirmed she could not be sure if Thornton was there or not.
Mr Legge-Mulley willingly went with Claude, Ms Taylor said. Mr Legge-Mulley left in the Bighorn, Claude left in the ute.
Prosecutor Jo Rielly put it to Ms Taylor her evidence in court differed to her formal police statement taken by Detective Sergeant Ford on November 30 and to what she told Detective Wilkie on December 14.
In the statement, she had not mentioned Claude visiting or asking him to take the cars. Things not in that statement were directly related to why Sarah and Claude were now on trial, Mrs Rielly said.
A job sheet made by Det Wilkie on December 14 stated, “I asked her (Ms Taylor) who had asked her to make a (new) statement. She replied Sarah Thornton had come around to the address saying, ‘do you know how much trouble Rob has got Claude in?’ so I told her I would make a statement.”
In court, Ms Taylor said she wrote the letter of her own volition. Her previous statement was intended to protect Rob, for whom she felt sorry.
She knew she might get in trouble if she made another statement, but she had to tell the truth because Claude had not committed any of offences Rob later alleged.
Other than to collect the letter, Thornton had not visited but had messaged her online. The letter was hand-written, so there was no copy to give police. She assumed they would get one themselves.
Police inquiries had upset and stressed her, especially given her existing health conditions. She was angry with Chad for causing so much drama in her usually quiet life, Ms Taylor said.
Another witness, Samantha Las Vegas’s flatmate at the time Shandelle Patene, confirmed Ms Las Vegas had the Bighorn vehicle the evening of November 26 and was hurriedly packing it with her belongings when Claude Sheridan and Mr Legge-Mulley turned up.
She did not know Claude but identified him later. She already knew Mr Legge-Mulley because he had recently lived at the house.
Sheridan was angry. He and Ms Las Vegas argued and yelled as to whether Chad Sheridan owed Claude money.
Ms Las Vegas told Ms Patene to phone police.
Claude threatened to punch Ms Las Vegas in the face and said he would stab her before police arrived.
Rob did not speak until Ms Las Vegas, now trying to get her belongings out of the vehicle, asked him “why are you doing this to me?”.
Rob replied it was because Claude would kill him.
Under cross-examination by Sheridan’s lawyer Tiana Epati, Ms Patene confirmed she was trying to concentrate on both the conversation at the vehicle and the 111 call. It was possible she couldn’t be sure who said what at the property, including what Rob might have said.
She had initially described the incident to the call centre as a “domestic”.
Cross-examined by Mr Lynch, she confirmed Claude and Mr Legge-Mulley were the only visitors she saw that night.
Proceeding