Mobile phone played key role in Featherstone prison plot, trial hears
A man accused of arranging for a female prison officer to smuggle drink and drugs into a Staffordshire jail has admitted that his mobile phone played a key role in the plot.
Andrelle Leedham made the confession under cross examination during his trial at Stafford Crown Court.
The 26 year old agreed that the phone had been used to send messages to Hannah Stewart, the prison officer who took the contraband into Featherstone jail, on November 22 last year.
He also accepted that at least one of the text messages – sent to her the day before the smuggling took place – appeared threatening.
He told the jury: "I did not write those messages and I do not know who did."
But he answered 'yeah' when Mr Gerard Quirke, prosecuting, said to him: "Whoever wrote these messages organised this smuggling?"
Leedham had met Stewart while serving time for blackmail in the prison and the pair had forged a relationship before his release in August last year.
His personal officer had been her father who also worked at the prison where she had been on the staff for four years, the court was told.
The defendant said, under cross examination: "I wasn't threatening to expose our relationship to her father. I did not threaten any harm to her family. I did not ask her to take a package into the prison for me and did not put that bundle together."
He explained how the friendship with Stewart had blossomed behind bars.
Leedham said: "She worked in the education department where I did the cleaning and we started flirting with each other."
He explained that the relationship became increasingly serious and alleged: "There was physical contact between us. Kissing and more than that – sexual acts on more than one occasion in a cleaning cupboard. That was going on for a few months."
Stewart, who has admitted conspiracy to smuggle drugs and misconduct in a public office and is awaiting sentence, had earlier told the court the couple had not had sexual relations until after his release from prison.
The affair fizzled out within a couple of months of him being freed and she maintains she delivered the package to an inmate at the prison under the instructions of Leedham.
Leedham whose family lives in Thompson Avenue, Blakenhall, but lived in Hollinswood, Telford, after his release from prison denies conspiracy to supply drugs and conspiracy to convey prohibited articles to HMP Featherstone.
The trial continues.
