THREE animal rights activists, including a Birmingham man, have admitted subjecting a family of farm owners to a six-year blackmail campaign which included the desecration of a pensioner's grave.
Kerry Whitburn, 36, of Summer Road, Edgbaston, changed his plea to admit conspiring to blackmail David Hall and Partners because the relatives used Darley Oaks Farm at Newchurch, near Lichfield, to breed guinea pigs for medical research.
His fellow defendants, John Smith, 39, of Leicester Street, Wolverhampton, and John Ablewhite, 36, of Hawley Street, Manchester, also changed their pleas to admit the same offence at Nottingham Crown Court.
The charge related to a six-year campaign waged against the Hall family from 1999.
It included the desecration of 82-year-old Gladys Hammond's grave at St Peter's Church, in the Staffordshire village of Yoxall, because she was the mother-inlaw of one of the farm owners, Christopher Hall.
