A MAN in the US Mid-West has told a trial jury in the North-East he sent three letters containing threats, two of them to members of the clergy, after being asked to do so by the accused in a poison pen case in County Durham.

Matthew Cooper, from Minnesota, in the US, was giving evidence via video link from his home city of St Paul, on the second day of the trial of County Durham man David Lindsay.

The 42-year-old defendant is accused of sending an anonymous letter to then Durham Chief Constable, Mike Barton, “putting a price on the heads” of the 57 named Labour members of the county council who voted in favour of a review of the terms and conditions of teaching assistants, in February 2017.

Durham Crown Court was told, by prosecution counsel, Peter Sabiston, that Mr Lindsay had, “a bee in his bonnet” over the issue, as his own mother was a teaching assistant at the time.

Mr Lindsay’s fingerprints are said to have been found on the envelope to the Chief Constable.

Faced with a charge of sending a letter with intent to cause distress and anxiety, with a trial looming in December 2018, three further anonymous letters, posted in the US, were sent weeks earlier, one each to the respective Anglican and Roman Catholic clergy in Mr Lindsay’s home village of Lanchester, and one to himself.

These letters contained threats to Mr Lindsay and to female police officers in County Durham, should he be acquitted at the then forthcoming trial.

The prosecution claims this was intended to back up Mr Lindsay’s claim that he was not responsible for the sending of the original letter.

It had the effect of aborting the trial of December 2018 as the source of the letters from the US was investigated.

Giving evidence, Mr Cooper agreed he was the sender of the subsequent three letters, but only after being asked to do so in emails from Mr Lindsay, who he knew as a fellow online blogger.

Cross-examining Mr Cooper, Mr Lindsay’s counsel, Chris Morrison, said: “You may well know each other from your blogs and you may have a certain few people who have come and gone into your email world, but he (Mr Lindsay) has never written you an email at all, about anything, has he?”

Mr Cooper replied: “He has sent me some before, to two accounts.”

Re-examining Mr Cooper, Mr Sabiston said: “Just so you know what is being put to you, it’s that you have manufactured evidence against Mr Lindsay to get him in trouble and that those emails are your creation and you have sent those letters on you own, without the persuasion of Mr Lindsay.”

Mr Cooper replied: “That’s not true”

Mr Sabiston asked Mr Cooper if he had a disagreement with Mr Lindsay, to which he replied: “No”.

Mr Lindsay, of Foxhills Crescent, Lanchester, is on trial not only over the first allegation of sending the original letter, but also on a second count of doing an act or acts tending or intended to pervert the course of justice.

He denies both charges. The trial continues today.