It was a nice day ... until police came round and said: Someone’s trying to kill you
Joss Stone tells of murder plot shock
JOSS Stone was having a ‘really nice day’ until she discovered two men had been planning to kidnap and kill her, she told a court yesterday.
The 25-year-old singer had no inkling of the alleged plot to decapitate her with a samurai sword and would sleep at her country house with the doors unlocked and the burglar alarm switched off, the jury heard.
But as she stood smartly- dressed in the witness box yesterday, Miss Stone said it was ‘creepy’ that people openly discussed her whereabouts.
On the day that two men were arrested a few miles from her Devon home after ‘eagle- eyed’ local residents contacted the police, the singer had been spending time with her then boyfriend, builder Daniel Radford, as a break from her international jet-setting lifestyle.
Asked if she had any reason to feel threatened at the time of the alleged murder plot, she replied: ‘Apart from the police coming around to say someone was trying to kidnap and kill me, it was a really nice day.’
She continued: ‘The police came round about midday and said these people were trying to kidnap me.
‘In the afternoon of the same day they came back and said, no, no, they are trying to kill me. That was strange.’
Miss Stone told the court she never kept more than £1,000 in cash at her house and did not have a safe. Explaining her atti-
‘I didn’t really have a lock on my door’
tude to security at her £500,000 home prior to the arrests, she said: ‘I had an alarm but I did not really turn it on very much. I didn’t really have a lock on my door which I could shut. But I do now.’
The pop star, who grew up in the county, added: ‘I’ve lived in Devon for a long time and nobody really shuts their doors around here.’ But she went on: ‘Now I do it. I turn the alarm on and I shut my windows at night.’
Miss Stone did not look at Kevin Liverpool or Junior Bradshaw, the two men charged with plotting to kill her, while she gave evidence at their trial for just over 30 minutes yesterday.
Clasping her hands together as she spoke, she occasionally giggled as the court was shown a six-minute film of her appearing in the MTV programme Cribs. In the episode, which the defendants are said to have viewed for ‘research’, she is seen guiding a camera crew around her previous Devon home, pointing out a blue toilet seat and her purple-themed bedroom.
She was also seen making a rude gesture to the camera and swearing during the 2008 broadcast.
The court has previously heard that Liverpool, 35, and Bradshaw, 32, were arrested a few miles from Miss Stone’s home with an arsenal of weapons – including a samurai sword – in their £440 Fiat Punto. The jury has been told they were armed with the sword as well as a knife and hammers, and had gaffer tape, masks and plastic bags.
Notes found by police refer to decapitating the singer and dumping her body in a river, and express disapproval of her links to the Royal Family, it has been claimed.
Bradshaw and Liverpool, both from Manchester, deny charges of conspiring to rob, murder and cause grievous bodily harm to Miss Stone, who was referred to in court yesterday by her real name, Joce- lyn Eve Stoker. Asked how she came to be a guest at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, she told the court: ‘I guess I was invited because I sang for them a couple of times. Once for Princess Diana’s concert a while ago and there was another charity event I did for Harry. I guess they just invited me because they thought it would be nice to invite me – so I went.’
The jury was also shown extracts from the singer’s work schedule, which included trips before and after the arrests to Los Angeles, New York, Barcelona, Paris and Dublin.
Miss Stone said her home, accessed through gates on a country lane, was something of an ‘open house’ but added that she has increased her security since the arrests on the morning of June 13, 2011.
Asked by Martin Meeke QC, representing Bradshaw, if her diary was available on the internet, she laughed as she replied: ‘No, I’d hope not. That wouldn’t be good.’
She continued: ‘If someone wanted to know where I was going to be they would have to ask somebody who knows. That could be somebody in the band, the crew or someone who saw me in the shop.’
She added: ‘People talk. Someone might say they’d seen me going to the Co-op. That’s the creepy thing.’
Earlier the jury heard how the alleged plotters tried to acquire semi- automatic weapons before driving to Devon. Text messages found on one of their phones showed they had asked contacts in Manchester to secure them a car and ‘a piece’, slang for a gun, as well as high tech weaponry including infrared kit and a silencer.
The trial at Exeter Crown Court continues.