Victoria Baptist,Mark Franklin

Victoria Baptist, who is on trial at Gloucester Crown Court with co-accused Mark Franklin, told police Tritton had asked her to pick up the chemicals for a friend of his - who needed it for motocross.
"I didn't know what the process was," she told officers, referring to her not understanding how the chemical was used in motor sport, when she was interviewed at Stroud police station.
Earlier the trial heard that forensic scientists discovered methanol and other chemicals when they raided an address in Edinburgh, and discovered buckets of liquid with rubber material floating in it.
Scientist Adele Lange told the jury that methanol was a solvent, which could be used to withdraw cocaine from the rubber.
They heard today how police had found at Baptist's home, after a search warrant was executed on August 25, 2005, a receipt for 75 litres of the chemical from a Bristol based company.
When asked how the chemical she picked up was contained, she said: "It was like some barrels - two feet tall. I think there were three of them."
"That's quite a lot of liquid isn't it?" said the police interviewer.
"Yes," was the reply from Baptist.
When asked what then happened, Baptist said she drove the chemicals to Cirencester where "Peter's friend had picked them up" in a car park.
She told police she thought the man's name was Bill, but she didn't know the surname.
He was in his late forties, of big build and grey haired, she said.
After talking to the man for a while, she told officers that Bill had "just stuck them in his car and said goodbye".
The jury has already heard how Baptist and Franklin were allegedly part of a gang which ingeniously smuggled cocaine impregnated in camping equipment.
The Class A drug would be absorbed into the material and then re-constituted using a chemical process once it had been brought into the country at two home "laboratories", in Scotland and London, which were raided by police.
The first major seizure was at an address in Hamlet Rd, Crystal Palace, London on September 15, 2004 where three and a half kilos of cocaine were seized.
At this property, officers found drums of chemicals and the cocaine was in the middle of the process of being extracted back out, the court has heard.
A flat at Wellington Place in Edinburgh was later uncovered to be a second cocaine laboratory, full of the equipment to process the Class A drug.
The linchpin in the operation was a man called Peter Tritton, who having been arrested in Ecuador in August 2005, is currently serving 12 years in prison there, the prosecution has explained.
Prosecutor Tim Probert-Wood said: "Both these defendants were, in different ways, connected to Peter Tritton."
He said Victoria Baptist, who was Tritton's girlfriend, was arrested with him in a hotel room in Ecuador in August 2005. They were found there with 7.8kg of cocaine after Tritton had been monitored for months by the serious organised crime squad and South American officers.
Franklin was then arrested, along with others, back in the UK.
Baptist, 35, of Paganhill Estate, Paganhill, Stroud, and Franklin, 31, of Chapel street, Stroud, have pleaded not guilty to conspiring together, and with Tritton, Alex Portocarrera, James Fletcher and others, to evade the prohibition on the importation of a controlled drug of Class A between June 1, 2004 and August 15, 2005.

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