Gary Arnold denies having participated in the kidnapping and forcible confinement of an American couple in their seventies in September 2020 and claims that if he appeared in the case at a certain time, it was because he had been coerced to do so under threat.
That’s from Arnold’s first day of testimony at his jury trial, which began last week, for the kidnapping of Sandra and James Helm in upstate New York and their confinement in Magog, New York. Quebec, from September 27 to 29, 2020.
The couple were abducted and held with a ransom demand after their grandson Mackenzie was arrested in a 50 kilogram cocaine seizure by US police in Vermont on September 21, 2020.
“Don’t call the police”!
Arnold said the whole thing 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 house.
“I read it five or six times, I couldn’t believe it. I am a farmer. I never had any threats to my life, I didn’t know what was going on,” Arnold told the jurors.
A short time later, an individual surnamed Big, described by Arnold as 6’2″ and weighing over 300lbs, approached the door of his van and asked him if he had called the police, handing him two phones and ordering him to follow his instructions.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE SÛRETÉ DU QUÉBEC
James and Sandra Helm
In a very detailed testimony that at times sounded like a Farm Machinery 101 course, Arnold then described the following days as he recounted harvesting corn in fields, repairing a combine, harvesting corn again and received equally compelling calls and text messages from some 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,” exclaimed Gary Arnold.
Catheter Race
According to evidence filed at trial, the Helm couple were abducted from their home in Moira, New York, at approximately 10:30 p.m. on September 27, 2020.
Arnold said that morning he received a communication ordering him to go to the parking lot of a restaurant in the West Island of Montreal. On the spot, an individual would have shown him a photo of relatives of his family and would have ordered him to follow his instructions.
At around 10:30 p.m., he testified, he received a communication directing 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 find some.
Arnold then phoned the Suroît hospital in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and spoke to a nurse around 1 a.m. before collecting the catheters from the establishment an hour and a half later.
His testimony stopped there and will continue this Friday.
To reach Daniel Renaud, dial 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.