A JUDGE yesterday described the "dark and sinister" underbelly of an outwardly peaceful village at the centre of a 12-year campaign of poison pen letters.

Summing up the case against retired academic Dr James Forster, 68, who is accused of terrorising the North Yorkshire community, Judge David Bryant likened the case to an Agatha Christie Miss Marple mystery.

Sending the Teesside Crown Court jury out to begin their deliberations, Judge Bryant said: "I don't suppose any of you expected to be delving below the surface of a peaceful English village."

It was a community where people engaged in what some might consider to be "old fashioned villagey activities" such as going to church, Brownies and the Women's Institute.

The judge said: "It is a place where the church, the parish council and Neighbourhood Watch loom large in people's lives. All of the people you have seen from Manfield are people who you might normally think are pillars of the community."

Despite all of this it was "perfectly clear" that beneath the peaceful surface of Manfield there were "dark and sinister events".

The jury will resume its deliberations this morning after failing to reach a verdict after just over an hour of consideration yesterday.

Judge Bryant told the jurors: "The prosecution say that one man is responsible and it is this defendant James Forster. They claim that they have built before you brick by brick a solid case against Mr Forster.

"The defence say that the prosecution has built a house of cards, flimsy, and when it is subjected to the wind of careful examination will just blow away."

The judge said that the jury might have expected as the witnesses came to the witness box that the "next one would turn out to be Agatha Christie's Miss Marple" who would, he said, "lay before you the cast iron solution to this whole bizarre mystery".

He added: "But real life and real cases do not have the neatness of a detective novel."

And although the case was unusual, it must be approached in the same way as any other criminal case being heard in a crown court.

Dr Forster, of Kirklea, Grunton Lane, Manfield, denies three charges of threatening to destroy or damage property, three of damaging property, three of sending indecent or obscene mail and one of incitement to commit burglary.

Read more about this trial here.