Trial told of dodgy DVDs and backyard blazes
SEVEN pornographic DVDs, including films entitled Lesbian PsychoDramas and Instant Lesbian, were found in a bag that Rebekah Brooks’ husband is accused of conspiring to hide from police, a court heard yesterday.
The DVDs, a Lesbian Lovers magazine, electronic equipment and other items were found behind a bin at the garage of the London flat that Charlie Brooks shared with Brooks, the former chief executive of News International.
The Old Bailey was told that among the DVDs was the Jenna Jameson film Where the Boys Aren’t 17 and the Tera Patrick film Lanny, Tera & Briana Stars entre Elles.
The jury in the phone hacking trial heard that other titles included Bride of Sin, 10 Petites Salopes and Lesbian PsychoDramas volumes two and three.
Mark Bryant-Heron, prosecuting, described the collection as ‘‘a series of interestingly titled DVDs’’.
Charlie Brooks, 50, the racehorse trainer, and security staff are accused of concealing material from detectives, while Rebekah, 45, was being questioned by police in July 2011. The contents of two bags found in the garage at the couple’s Chelsea Harbour flat were revealed yesterday.
They included various items of mail, a conker, a newsletter from the British Kunekune Pig Society dated May 2011, a programme from that year’s Wimbledon Championships, various invoices and a headed notepad belonging to Charlie Brooks.
Among the electrical equipment was a News International laptop, a black iPod, a USB stick and a thumb drive, an HTC smartphone, a digital voice recorder and various power cables.
The court heard that there was also a prescription for 28 tablets of Zolpidem, a treatment for insomnia, in Rebekah Brooks’ name, and a pack of headache tablets.
The Brooks and Mark Hanna, 50, the former head of security at News International, deny perverting the course of justice in an allegedly elaborate operation to conceal material from detectives investigating phone hacking at the News of the World.
The now-defunct tabloid newspaper, which belonged to the same stable of newspapers as The Times, was closed in July 2011 after revelations about the hacking of the phone of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
The court also heard yesterday that Hanna was discussing the newspaper’s closure in a pub when he allegedly admitted having a bonfire in his garden. Robert Hernandez, a member of the security team at News International, said that Hanna revealed he had ‘‘burnt stuff’’ and did not reply when asked if papers were destroyed.
Hernandez said: ‘‘At some point, and I don’t know how we came to that, but he mentioned one time that he dug a hole in his garden and burnt stuff.’’
He added that Hanna did not say what had been burnt and ‘‘for all I know he could have been burning bank statements’’. The trial continues. Alan Ostler, 32, of Uxbridge, West London, a former fitness trainer at Broadmoor Hospital, Berkshire, received a sevenmonth suspended sentence at the Old Bailey yesterday after admitting trying to sell stories about patients to two tabloid newspapers.
He was also ordered to do 150 hours’ community work.