A DROITWICH couple told how their lives were devastated by a terrifying campaign to set mobile homes ablaze on the site where they had lived happily for seven years.

Don Gibbs, a former maintenance engineer, was woken in the middle of the night to find the next door neighbour’s home on fire.

He and partner Patricia Downes were “horrified” to see the sky aglow and another home burning further away at The Glen site in Blackwell, Bromsgrove.

Mr Gibbs, aged 52, said: “There was hysteria and screaming from the residents. It was horrible. No-one knew what was going on. We didn’t go back to bed that night."

Miss Downes, 66, added: “Luckily the fire didn’t spread to our home, but the smoke was horrendous. Everyone was utterly shocked.

“After that I would go to bed and Don would sleep in his clothes in the living room. If he heard a noise in the night he would go out to investigate.”

A month later, a third home was torched by a gang recruited by two brothers who planned to drive residents out and buy the site cheaply, Worcester Crown Court heard.

The couple, who left the home they paid £32,000 for in 2001, to live in Worcester Road, Droitwich Spa, spoke as a jury convicted the blaze ringleader of conspiring to commit arson and blackmail.

Anthony Bernard Tully, aged 60, organised a gang to drive from the Leicester area, where they all lived, and set the fires last year.

The jury cleared Douglas Guilford, 40, of conspiring to blackmail between January and September 2007.

But they were unable to reach verdicts on Luke Hardy, 23, and David Hallam, 29, who both denied blackmail conspiracy. The judge ordered not guilty verdicts. All four men in the dock were remanded in custody and will be sentenced at a date to be fixed for their parts in the frightening crimes.

The jury heard that Hardy, Hallam and Guildford drove to the site in Tully’s BMW to start the blazes.

Brothers John and Simey Doherty, and Tully’s son, Anthony John Tully, pleaded guilty to arson and blackmail plots before the trial began. All three are also in custody.

Judge Alistair McCreath said: “Ruthless arrogance lies behind this story. The organisers thought that no-one would dare to stop them. They didn’t even need to cover their tracks. The two Doherty brothers didn’t mind how they got the price down. They did it by intimidation. But they didn’t sully their hands with the fires, they got others to do their dirty work.”

Prosecutor Stephen Linehan QC said the brothers wanted to buy the site and the remaining homes at a knockdown price. The blazes were planned to give the site a bad reputation and make the owners and residents anxious to sell.

Tully’s BMW car was used in the first raid on two unoccupied homes and his handwriting was found on cardboard inside the car identifying the address of the targets.

He and his co-defendants declined to give evidence to the jury. They also declined to answer most of the questions put to them during police interviews.

Mr Gibbs told how they fell in love with the site the first time they went to visit it.

“It was pretty and peaceful,” he said. “We felt very safe and I didn’t even lock my car up at night.

“Everybody living there looked out for everyone else. It was a real community. There had been no trouble for over 20 years according to many of the residents who expected to live there for the rest of their lives.”

His partner said they knew at least seven people who had left since the blazes.

She said: “The stress was terrible and still affects many on the site. A lot of people living there want to leave after this nightmare. We regularly visit the site to talk to our friends. We still class it as our home. But we came to the trial every day to put that part of our lives to rest.”