War of the poisoned artichokes
Three sisters locked in a bitter feud over their mother’s will. A book that spills ALL the family secrets. And a deadly act of sabotage in the vegetable patch . . .
‘She called me a bigot and said my husband was odious’
AS WIDOW Winifred Leeden entered her 90s she was comforted by the fact that not only was she still living at home but also that her family were on hand to help.
Of her four daughters, the eldest, Lyndsey Glassett, had moved in with her, while secondborn Deborah Lemay was a regular visitor.
If that wasn’t enough, in the flat above was Gillian Leeden, daughter number three.
As the local vicar once observed, wasn’t Winifred fortunate to have such a family?
Well, as a quite extraordinary court case revealed this week, the reality could not have been more different.
While they may all have been living cheekby-jowl in a tree-lined street in an affluent commuter town in Hertfordshire, any harmony that once existed had long since evaporated — to be replaced by open warfare.
The first skirmishes, it is claimed, involved sister Gillian opening the windows of her flat and blasting out music whenever her siblings appeared in the garden below.
It was Big, Fat Woman by Joe Tex when Deborah was around, and Who Let The Dogs Out by Baha Men for Lyndsey.
‘Deborah, why aren’t you talking to me?’ Gillian would apparently shout. Or, if it was Lyndsey: ‘The grass is getting very long — you’re not doing your job properly.’
Then there was the blog in which Gillian referred to Deborah as The Hippopotamus — apparently a reference to the mother-in-law of the Seventies TV character Reggie Perrin. And that was before the police got involved. The Daily Mail can reveal that Lyndsey was arrested for squirting fish oil into a car belonging to one of Gillian’s tenants. She accepted a police caution. Then, following their mother’s death in 2014, Gillian was convicted of criminal damage for pouring weedkiller on Lyndsey’s vegetable patch, destroying a bed of Jerusalem artichokes.
Next Lyndsey and Deborah — and their neighbours and friends — received a book in the post written by their sister. Entitled Behind The Artichokes, it purported to reveal the truth behind the family feud.
In it, Gillian accused her two sisters of stealing £21,000 from their late mother, removing furniture and jewellery from her home, and abusing her while she was still alive.
It also accused Lyndsey, 72, of youthful promiscuity while making embarrassing claims about 69-year- old Deborah’s bowel movements.
Inevitably, the book served only to further fuel the flames of the family dispute.
So much so that, last December, Gillian was arrested and charged with sending a ‘malicious communication’.
She has spent the past five days in the dock at St Albans Crown Court witnessing the family’s dirty laundry being aired very publicly. Her sisters gave evidence against her.
Yesterday, the case against her dramatically collapsed as the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence for it to continue. He ruled that Gillian had no case to answer and instructed the jury to find her not guilty of all charges.
The aborted trial alone is estimated to have cost the taxpayer more than £10,000.
But, the Mail can reveal, that is nothing compared to the £50,000 the family has previously spent on lawyers’ fees in their various legal battles with one another.
A costly lesson, if nothing else, of how a sibling squabble can spiral out of hand.
When it comes to contentious books, the last time legal observers can recall a jury in a criminal trial being asked to read one from cover to cover, the year was 1960 and the venue the Old Bailey.
After being handed copies of D.H. Lawrence’s banned book Lady Chatterley’s Lover, they were asked to decide if it should be considered a work of art — or an obscenity.
They plumped for the former, so giving the green light to Penguin to publish it.
FASTforward almost 60 years and last week six men and six women at St Albans Crown Court thumbed their way through Behind The Artichokes by former nurse Gillian Leeden, 66.
‘This is not a literary masterpiece,’ the twice- divorced grandmother wrote in the book’s preface, something the Daily Mail can confirm.
‘It is merely a disheartening narrative of the past five years that will establish the reality behind the headlines. I hope this sets the story right and the descendants of those involved will be filled with shame at what their parents and grandparents did.’
And over 15 chapters and 216 pages she does not pull any punches.
Setting any ‘spin’ to one side, the basic facts are as follows.
The Leeden family were raised by mum Winifred and her husband Basil in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire. They had five daughters — Lyndsey, Deborah, Gillian, Heather and Jessica.
Tragically, Jessica died in 1998, the year their father also lost his life to bowel cancer.
Their mother, meanwhile, had been diagnosed with Guillain Barre Syndrome, a virus that attacks the nervous system.
To help care for her, Gillian moved into the flat above Winifred. She had purchased it as an investment in 1994, renting it out while she worked in Lancashire as a nurse.
Having moved back to Hertfordshire, she set up a string of laser hair removal clinics. Over the next 11 years she looked after her mother, including managing her money.
Then, in 2009, elder sister Lyndsey returned to the UK from France where she had been living with her third husband. The retired chiropodist moved in to the flat with her mother.
Within a year, Gillian’s relationship with her mother and with Lyndsey had completely broken down. She had also fallen out with Deborah and her husband Brian Lemay.
In the book, Gillian makes it clear she and her elder sisters had not got on well as children but that she had decided to let ‘bygones be bygones’.
But the mood changed in 2010 after her mother bought Lyndsey a car.
‘I have to admit I was not happy with this,’ she wrote. ‘Lyndsey, in my opinion, was out to get as much financially from Mum as she could.
‘ She paid no rent, Mum bought all her food and alcohol and anything else she needed. Lyndsey was in my view on the make and was doing pretty well.’
Giving evidence, Lyndsey denied this was the case. She said that her parents had bought Gillian a car when she was 18 and that, anyway, she had always been her mother’s ‘favourite’.
Finding her access to Winifred restricted, Gillian confronted their mother in October 2010. The meeting did not go well.
SHEtold Gillian she did not want her help any more, and that she should move out of the flat above.
From that day onwards, Gillian would never again see her mother — not even attending her funeral. She would subsequently claim her relatives had turned her mum against her, even changing the locks on her door.
‘Deborah, Brian and Lyndsey,’ she wrote. ‘ The three people who for years and years had done nothing for mum. THEY had decided I wasn’t to see Mum.’ Battle-lines were drawn. The first ‘ victim’ would be Gillian’s new lodger, who rented the upstairs flat when she moved out.
In her book she claims that Lyndsey was caught on CCTV squirting fish oil at her
tenant’s car with a toy water pistol. The police were called and, while giving evidence in the latest trial, Lyndsey admitted she had been cautioned for criminal damage as a result of the incident.
Next, Gillian turned her attention to her mother’s finances. Lyndsey, Deborah and her husband Brian had been granted Lasting Power of Attorney over her affairs. Gillian demanded to see full details of how her money was being spent.
She claims in her book that ‘vast sums’ had been drawn out on her mother’s behalf.
Quizzed about this allegation, the sisters told the court nothing of the sort had happened and that an investigation by independent solicitors had proved that to be the case. Undeterred, Gillian complained to the police, to social services and to The Court of Protection. The court is responsible for making decisions on financial or welfare matters for people who can’t make decisions at the time they need to be made.
Gillian asked them to appoint an independent attorney to look after her mother. Both sides were asked to submit statements.
Writing in her book, Gillian reveals how in December 2012 she then successfully accessed her sister Deborah’s email account using a password she claims she had previously shared with her.
‘I knew I was in the right and after reading all their dreadful lies about me in their reply witness statements I felt very justified in trying,’ she wrote. ‘After all, all I wanted was the truth.’
In the book she prints her relatives’ emails in full.
Among other things, she claims that they revealed their plans to take legal action against her for parking on her mother’s drive, for having an ‘ illegal’ roof terrace above her mother’s kitchen and for working from home without informing the local council.
The jury was told that the emails had been accessed ‘without authority’.
In June 2013, as part of The Court of Protection process, the parties agreed to go to mediation.
It is claimed this resulted in her relatives agreeing to stand down as her mother’s attorneys and the appointment of an independent person to manage their mother’s finances.
She gleefully notes that in the process they had run up £17,000worth of legal fees.
(Over the coming years, a further £35,000 would be paid by the family to a firm of solicitors to manage their mothers’ money and to audit the previous spending.)
But that would be far from the end of the matter.
Next, Gillian created an online blog, which resulted in her receiving a caution from police.
‘It was nasty and vicious,’ Deborah, a former town councillor, told the court. ‘She called my husband an odious little man, said Lyndsey had never done anything in her life and called me a bigot and failed politician and journalist.’
In April 2014, their mother died, aged 93. In her will she left her estate, including her £400,000 flat, to be divided among her nine grandchildren.
Two months later and with Lyndsey due to move out of her mother’s flat, Gillian took it upon herself to do some tidying up.
‘Weeds were growing everywhere and my Dad used to keep it so lovely, all swept and clean,’ she wrote.
‘ I decided to start to clean the driveway and get rid of the weeds that had grown all over the place. On went the weedkiller — very satisfying!’
Her actions were caught on CCTV and Gillian was arrested by police.
She was charged with criminal damage — the weedkiller had killed Lyndsey’s artichokes.
When the case came to court, Gillian claimed she thought she had only been spraying weeds.
But she was found guilty, given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay her sister £ 5 in compensation.
In the meantime, Lyndsey had moved to Norfolk. In her book, Gillian claims she took three removal vans full of furniture with her. ‘She left with a house load of belongings, a car bought by Mum, garden furniture bought by Mum and £21,000 in the building society,’ she wrote.
After her sisters were sent copies of the book, the allegation would form the basis of her subsequent prosecution.
Gillian was arrested and charged with two counts of sending a letter, communication or article conveying false information which she knew to be false under the 1988 Malicious Communications Act.
THecharges related to allegations that the sisters had stolen £21,000 from their late mother, removed furniture and jewellery from their late mother’s address without consent and abused their mother.
Before the court case was halted, both sisters gave evidence for the prosecution.
Deborah denied the claims about her bowel movements or that she had stolen money, jewellery or furniture. She said she was given a necklace by her mother and only took her share of the furniture.
As for Lyndsey, she said: ‘I left with more than I arrived with because I had been living there four and a half years and I had bought several items.
‘I left with a lot of furniture which had been left by my mother in her letter of wishes to each of the daughters.
‘Debbie didn’t want furniture because she had her own home so I took most of her stuff as well with her permission.’
She wiped tears from her eyes as she denied ever stealing anything from her mother.
While Gillian walked free from court last night having been cleared of the charges facing her, the judge in the case imposed a restraining order upon her.
It bans her from contacting her sisters or publishing information about them in print or online. As for the book, she was also ordered not to ‘ cause’ it to be further published or reproduced in the media.
Whether or not that will be sufficient to spell the end of this bitter family feud, only time will tell.