The trial of a man charged with blackmailing a senior is under way in the Supreme Court.

Janico Burrows, 28, from Davis Drive, Sandys, is charged with making “unwarranted demands with menaces” on Paulette Godfrey.

Mr Burrows is alleged to have assisted Jahmeco Blakeney in scamming Ms Godfrey out of $1,200 over the course of four days in June 2020.

Blakeney, who was living in the same house as Mr Burrows at the time of the offence, was jailed for 18 months in January after pleading guilty to a charge of blackmail.

Opening the case for the Crown, prosecutor Daniel Kitson-Walters argued that, although Mrs Godfrey was not able to identify Burrows, there was enough circumstantial evidence through telephone records to secure a conviction.

Giving evidence in court, Mrs Godfrey, from St Anne’s Road in Southampton, said that she received a telephone call on the morning of June 2, 2020, from a man who she said was attempting to disguise his voice.

She said: “They said that my son owed them money and that if I didn’t pay them they would put my son in a plastic bag and throw him on my lawn. They were going to kill him.”

Mrs Godfrey told the court that she could not trace the number of the caller as it came up as “private” on her mobile phone.

She said that she agreed to pay out $1,200 and made three payments over the following three days. She said that she withdrew amounts of $400, $300 and $500 from an ATM before driving to St Anne’s Church, where she was met on each occasion by an unknown man who took the cash from her.

Mrs Godfrey said that she was not able to identify the man because he was wearing a face mask — which were mandatory at the time because of the pandemic.

“All I could see was his eyes,” she said.

She added that the man never spoke when taking the money from her “but once they said ‘good morning’, so I knew it was a Bermudian”.

Mrs Godfrey also said that the three meetings took place at about 10.30am each day.

Asked why she did not alert the police immediately after she received the first call, Mrs Godfrey said that she thought the calls would stop once she had paid out $1,200.

She said: ”I got plenty more phone calls. They continued to call me and it was always a private number.“

She explained that when she refused to agree to give the caller a further $200, he became frustrated and forgot to disguise his voice.

She said that she then recognised the caller to be Blakeney, who was a friend of her son, Paul Williams. She told the court that Blakeney had visited her home a few days before the offence claiming that Mr Williams had stolen $80 from his mother.

The court also heard from Stephany Burrows Trott, who is Mr Burrows’s great aunt and also a former foster mother to Blakeney. Both men were living with Ms Burrows Trott at the time of the offence.

Ms Burrows Trott described her nephew as laid-back, while Blakeney was “a manipulator but very charming”.

Under cross-examination by Marc Daniels, who is representing Mr Burrows, the witness agreed that the two men were not “buddy-buddies” because of the 15-year age gap between them, and that they would normally communicate by telephone, even when in the house together.

Asked by Mr Daniels if she was aware that Blakeney suffered from depression and anxiety and had a severe personality disorder, Ms Burrows Trott agreed that he had had mental-health issues.

She said that the island was under a number of lockdown restrictions at the time of the offence, but that Blakeney had been authorised to drive her car to take her mother-in-law for dialysis treatment on three mornings a week.

She also said that Blakeney would often drive Mr Burrows to his job at KFC, where he worked the late shift several days a week. She confirmed that the defendant had never had a driver’s licence.

The trial, before Puisne Judge Juan Wolffe, resumes today.

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