A MAN has been found guilty of trying to extort €50,000 from his father by setting up what was described as a fake “tiger kidnapping”.
The defence claimed he had been put under duress by others to extort money from his father in this way.
However, the prosecution said he had resented the way he was treated in his mother’s will.
A jury of eight women and four men needed just over an hour to find Liam Ward (32), Rowan Heights, Drogheda, Co Louth, and Meeting House Lane, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, guilty of demanding money with menaces from William Ward snr on February 14th, 2007.
Mullingar Circuit Court heard Ward’s partner visited his sister Brenda and his father at their business premises in Tallaght that day with photographs of Ward bound, gagged and with a sawn-off shotgun pointed to his head.
The pictures contained a scrawled note demanding €50,000 that evening or they would next see Ward in a closed casket.
Gardaí set up their search and surveillance, which led to Ward being seen in a car coming from Drogheda to Dublin where he was to be handed over to his father in exchange for an envelope that would have contained not money, but newspaper.
When gardaí saw him calmly pay for petrol at a filling station, they believed the kidnapping might be hoax.
Ward was arrested that evening with the car driver.
Ward said he had lied to gardaí in an interview because he did not want to name the people who had forced him to be involved in the incident.
He said he had failed the night before to pick up a car containing drugs because he stopped to smoke heroin and, when the car went missing, he was held responsible.
David Goldberg SC said his client, who had been taking drugs since he was 12, was involved with dangerous people, who used him in a ruthless manner.
He was in fear for his life and the lives of his partner and children and he had not run away at the filling station because he had nowhere to go.
However, John Hayden, prosecuting, accused Ward of carefully staging the hoax with his accomplices. Mr Hayden said Ward felt hard done by when he discovered he had been left out of his mother’s will.
The court heard his mother contracted hepatitis C following an infected blood transfusion after Ward’s birth.
She was awarded upwards of €500,000 by the subsequent tribunal.
Ward was not included in the will and did not know about the money until late 2006. He then withdrew a civil challenge when the family decided they would reach an agreement together.
Judge Tony Hunt said he believed the jury had reached the right verdict, showing good sense and proper policy in an unusual case.
All kinds of crime could be licensed by those involved in crime if a defence of duress such as this was given credence, the judge suggested, and he remanded Ward in custody to next week for sentencing.