One of the accused in the Mr X kidnapping case has told jurors they will hear evidence of extreme game-playing.
In the High Court at Wellington yesterday, Upper Hutt lawyer John Arthur Burrett, who is on trial with his nephew, Matthew Norman Payne, said he would call evidence about the games
they played and the extremes to which they went.
Burrett, who is conducting his own defence, conceded he built the plywood bunker the Crown claims was intended to hold a Wellington businessman, whose name is suppressed.
The bunker was unveiled to the jury for the first time yesterday.
Burrett took issue with a police officer calling the businessman a victim, saying there had been no direct contact with him. But Detective Peter Forsythe stuck to the victim tag, saying the man had been affected by a crime.
Burrett, 53, and Payne, 22, have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to kidnap for ransom, conspiring to kidnap with intent to detain, and unlawfully having a pistol.
When arrested, Burrett told police the kidnap plan had been a game.
The Crown alleges that from July 10 to 22 last year Burrett and Payne plotted to kidnap the businessman. The plot was uncovered when a contractor laying possum bait at the Tunnel Gully recreation area north of Upper Hutt stumbled across a trap door to an underground bunker.
Jody Chapman said that 10m to 20m from a bush track he saw some dirt disturbed, and a little further on another disturbed patch with a small ponga fern on top of a piece of wood.
"It wasn't right. Why would a ponga tree be growing on top of a board?" Mr Chapman said.
He and a workmate opened a trapdoor and saw a blanket or duvet inside.
They shut the door and put the fern back. Later, the five-man bait-laying team went inside and found food, cans of drink, wine and fruit. They told police of the find that night.
Mr Chapman said he remembered seeing a car with the numberplate JENNIB parked near the recreation area a day or two before finding the box. The Crown says the car belonged to Burrett's wife.
Cross-examined by Burrett, Mr Chapman said that when he saw the first patch of disturbed dirt he thought it looked like a grave.
The jury is expected to visit Tunnel Gully and the Wellington Botanic Gardens where Burrett and Payne were arrested.
- NZPA
One of the accused in the Mr X kidnapping case has told jurors they will hear evidence of extreme game-playing.
In the High Court at Wellington yesterday, Upper Hutt lawyer John Arthur Burrett, who is on trial with his nephew, Matthew Norman Payne, said he would call evidence about the games
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