Gary Arnold has denied taking part in the September 2020 kidnapping and forcible incarceration of a 70-year-old American couple and claims if he appeared at any point in the case it was because he was coerced under threat.
Posted 2:55pm Updated 6:25pm
This is from Arnold’s first day of testimony in his jury trial, which began last week, in the kidnapping of Sandra and James Helm in upstate New York and their forcible incarceration in Magog, New York, Quebec on September 27-29, 2020.
The couple were abducted and kidnapped for ransom after their grandson Mackenzie died on March 21.
“Don’t call the police”!
Arnold said it all started for him on the morning of September 24 when a threatening handwritten note warning him not to call the police was left on the door of his wife’s home.
“I read it five or six times, I couldn’t believe it. i am a farmer My life was never threatened, I didn’t know what was going on,” Arnold told the jury.
A short time later, a person surnamed Big, described by Arnold as 6ft 2in and weighing over 300 pounds, approached the door of his van and asked him if he had called the police, gave him two phones and ordered him to do so to follow his instructions .
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY THE SÛRETÉ DU QUÉBEC
James and Sandra Helm
In a very detailed testimonial that sometimes sounded like a Farm Machinery 101 course, Arnold then described the days that followed, recounting harvesting corn in fields, fixing a combine, harvesting corn again, and receiving equally compelling phone calls and texts from a few of the suspects involved in the case.
“I did not call the police and followed the instructions. I didn’t want to end up in a body bag,” Gary Arnold explained.
catheter race
According to evidence presented at the trial, the Helms were abducted from their home in Moira, New York, at around 10:30 p.m. on September 27, 2020.
Arnold said he received a notice that morning telling him to go to the parking lot of a restaurant on Montreal’s West Island. On the spot, a person would have shown him a photo of relatives in his family and ordered him to follow his instructions.
At around 10:30 p.m., he testified, he received a message that took him to Richmond Road in Summerstown, near Cornwall, Ontario, where he arrived at around 12:15 a.m.
There he met a visibly upset man who needed catheters and asked him to get some.
Arnold then called Suroît Hospital in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and spoke to a nurse at around 1am before collecting the catheters from the facility an hour and a half later.
His testimony ended there and will continue this Friday.
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