London – At the end of September 2023, when the first big storm in the fall started in the United Kingdom, a malicious plan was developed to eliminate one of the favorite trees of England.
Daniel Graham sent a message to his boyfriend, Adam Carruthers, telling him to “warm up the saws”, suggesting that they could make work eliminate the fallen trees.
But it was not strong winds that lowered the famous Tree of Sycamore Galle that night, the jurors determined on Friday. It was Graham and Carruthers – Do not clean the damage of the storm, but creating their own waste.
The couple was found guilty of two counts of criminal damage by a jury in Newcastle Crown runs after a little more than five hours of deliberations over two days.
Even without the smoking chainsaw, the prosecutors were able to prove the case through a mine of digital evidence which put men near the tree when it was slaughtered or showed them with enthusiasm by enthusiastically discussing the next day when the history of the disappearance of the tree has become viral.
The first piece of evidence was a grainy video on Graham’s phone on the crime committed in the dark and stormy night.
Images of the last stand of the tree showed a lonely silhouette silhouetted under the imposing canopy in a fight with the trunk, because the undoubted sound of the chainsaw groans over the wind. With a single crack, the buzzing of the saw died, the person came back and the tree which had held about 150 years crashing on earth.
The metadata identified the location of the video at the site of the tree in the Northumberland National Park. Other data have shown that the Graham Range Rover had traveled there.
The Sycamore Gaping tree was not the largest or oldest sycamore in Britain, but it was prized for its picturesque setting, planted symmetrical between two hills along the old wall built by the Emperor Hadrian in 122 AD to protect the northwest border of the Roman Empire and had attracted generations of follow-up.
The tree was known for a long time to residents but received international attention in Kevin Costner’s film in 1991 “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”. This attracted tourists, lovers, landscape photographers and even those who spread the ashes of their loved ones.
“For more than a century, Sycamore Gap has been an emblematic natural benchmark in northeast of England, bringing immeasurable joy to those who visit the region,” said Gale Gilchrist, chief prosecutor of the region, in a statement after the verdict. “In just under three minutes, Graham and Carruthers put an end to his historical heritage in an act of deliberate and insane destruction.”
Neither Graham, who did not have a small construction company or Carruthers, a mechanic who sometimes worked with him, showed no visible reaction as the verdicts were read.
Justice Christina Lambert ordered the two men detained until the conviction on July 15 and said they could face “a long period in detention”. The maximum sentence for criminal damage is 10 years in prison.
The accused, formerly close friends, both said they were in their respective homes that evening and had nothing to do with crime.
Graham pointed his finger on Carruthers, saying that he was obsessed with the tree. Graham said his friend and another man had taken his Range Rover and the phone on the site to supervise him.
Carruthers said he didn’t understand why people were so upset by “just a tree”, saying it was “almost as if someone had been murdered”. His lawyer suggested that Graham said a desperate lie after being taken.
Prosecutor Richard Wright said that the two men were there together from the start, with evidence showing that Carruthers had left far from his way earlier in the day to approach the tree on a recognition mission.
Wright said he couldn’t say who cut the tree and held the phone, but the two men were the only ones in the world with the video on their devices.
While Graham’s vehicle was followed on the way back to his house in Carlisle – about 40 minutes – Carruthers received a video from their baby partner and replied: “I have a better video than that,” said Wright.
“At the time of this textual conversation, the only people in the world who knew that the tree had been shot was the men who had shot him,” said Wright. “And the only people in the world who had access to the video were the men who had filmed themselves cutting the tree: the defendants Graham and Carruthers.”
The next day, the two messages feverishly exchanged after the tree is discovered.
“It has become viral. It’s in the world,” said Graham.
Carruthers transmitted a Facebook commentary by a man who criticized the “disgusting behavior” of “weak” vandals.
Carruthers said he would like to see the man “launch an operation as we did last night”.
Wright said that the police had never located the chainsaw used to fall, but that each man had access to many saws – a fact that they both tried to minimize. Investigators did not find a wooden corner cut off from the trunk to drop the tree in the right direction.
But the images on Graham’s phone showed a slice of wood and a chainsaw at the back of his vehicle at his home. A medico-legal botanist said that there was “very solid evidence” that it was the missing corner which suggested that Wright had been considered a trophy.
The prosecutors did not propose any evidence of a crime reason other than calling it insane vandalism. But Wright suggested to the jurors in his fence argument that the men cut the tree for “a little laughter” but had not made the anger they would arouse in “the arboreal equivalent of insane wheelbases”.
The tree was originally estimated at more than 620,000 pounds (around $ 830,000) and the wall damage was estimated at 1,100 pounds (almost $ 1,500).
But Friday, the prosecutor, Rebecca Brown, said that these figures were disputed and are probably lower, but that is easily held easily in the higher category of damage to the purpose of determining the sentence.
