Group found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap Essex coroner

Lincoln Brookes, senior coroner for Essex, said he received a series of “very bizarre” letters in 2022 before receiving emails in April 2023 stating that “corporal punishment may be administered”.

He described the emails, which claimed to be warrants “for seizure of goods and persons”, as “troubling” and “upsetting”.

Mr Brookes told Chelmsford Crown Court that in an attachment to an email he was accused of “detrimental necromancy”.

Mark Christopher, 58, of Forest Gate, east London, Matthew Martin, 47, of Plaistow, east London, Shiza Harper, 45, of South Benfleet, Essex and Sean Harper, 38, of South Benfleet, Essex turned up at the coroner’s court in Chelmsford on April 20 last year.

The four defendants all denied conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to commit false imprisonment, but all four were found guilty on both counts by majority verdicts of 11 to one.

The verdicts of the jury followed 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 Mr Brookes with intent to cause distress or anxiety.

Guilty - Matthew Martin was also found guilty of sending a letter or email with intent to cause distress or anxiety (Image: Joe Giddens)

Mr Brookes was not in the coroner’s court building at the time of the incident last year.

Essex area coroner Michelle Brown – who had been conducting documentary inquests from paperwork and without witnesses or family present – said the group came into her courtroom.

She said 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 defendants were “members of a group called the Federal Postal Court, or Court of the People”.

He said Christopher was the “self-appointed leader” with the title “chief judge of England and all dominions”.

“He trained under the late David Wynn Miller,” the judge said.

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.

The defendants will be sentenced at a later date.

Jurors are continuing to deliberate on two further counts which Martin denies.

Martin denies the assault by beating of security guard Eamonn McCormack on April 20 2023, and the criminal damage of his spectacles.