‘Cult’ members guilty of trying to kidnap coroner for ‘performing necromancy’
‘I turned around and started driving home as fast as I could as I was fearful for the safety of my family.’
A cult group has been found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap a coroner for ‘detrimental necromancy’.
Lincoln Brookes, senior coroner for Essex, received a series of ‘very bizarre’ letters before being told that ‘corporal punishment may be administered’.
The group, known as the ‘Federal Postal Court’, or ‘Court of the People’, turned up at the coroner’s court with handcuffs on April 20 of last year and demanded to know where Lincoln was.
They accused him of performing necromancy – the supposed practice of communicating with the dead to predict the future.
He wasn’t there at the time as he was attending a relative’s medical appointment, and was told not to come to work as ‘these are the people from the letter – they’re coming to get you’.
Lincoln told the court: ‘I turned around and started driving home as fast as I could as I was fearful for the safety of my family.’
Mark Christopher, 58, Matthew Martin, 47, Shiza Harper, 45, and Sean Harper, 38, all from east London and Essex, denied conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to commit false imprisonment.
However all four have been found guilty on both counts by majority verdicts of 11 to one following a two-week trial at Chelmsford crown court and more than 10 hours of deliberation.
Christopher was also found guilty, by a unanimous verdict, of sending threatening letters to Lincoln with intent to cause distress or anxiety.
Essex area coroner Michelle Brown said the group came into her courtroom and the leader ‘kept demanding that I find and get Mr Brookes’.
The judge, Mr Justice Goss, told jurors while summing up evidence in the case that the Christopher was the ‘self-appointed leader’ with the title ‘chief judge of England and all dominions’.
He said Martin was a ‘sheriff and a coroner’, Sean Harper a ‘sheriff’ and his wife Shiza Harper a ‘postal inspector and auditor’.
‘The other three defendants (Martin, Harper and Harper) were all qualified by him (Christopher),’ the judge said.
All four defendants will be sentenced at a later date.
Jurors are continuing to deliberate on two further counts which Martin denies.
He denies the assault by beating of security guard Eamonn McCormack on April 20, 2023, and the criminal damage of his spectacles.
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