New Details: Inside The John Travolta Blackmail Plot
Sept. 23 2009, Published 12:51 p.m. ET
UPDATE: Travolta has been spotted near the courthouse. More details to come. . .
Superstar John Travolta fell victim to a $25 million blackmail plot after he allegedly refused medical help for his son Jett who lay dying after suffering a seizure.
The UK Daily Mail newspaper reports that the distraught superstar is said to have asked paramedics to drive the 16-year-old to an airport so that he could receive treatment back in the United States instead of being driven to the Island hospital only 45 minutes away.
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A paramedic at the scene asked a senior police officer to witness a ‘refusal of medical attention’ form.
Police Inspector Andrew Wells told the nine persons Jury at The Bahamas Supreme Court that he signed the form as a witness before the ambulance sped away but that it changed route and went to the Rand Memorial Hospital instead of Freeport International Airport.
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Sadly, Jett, 16, could not be revived by the paramedics and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital – a Bahamas undertaker said that the death certificate listed seizures as the cause of death.
Paramedic Tarino Lightbourne is accused of keeping back the document and threatening to release it to the public if Travolta did not pay him.
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He is standing trial with former Senator and lawyer Pleasant Bridgewater in the extortion attempt against the star.
Travolta is on a list of 14 witnesses scheduled to give evidence at the trial where it is claimed both Lightbourne and Bridgewater were taped demanding millions of dollars from the actor in exchange for the legal document relating to Jett’s death.
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“Contact was made with certain persons to communicate a threat to John Travolta,” said Bernard Turner the County chief prosecutor in the Nassau courtroom on Tuesday.
Travolta, 55, and his wife Kelly Preston, 46, have struggled to come to terms with the sudden death of their son earlier this year at the family’s vacation home in the Bahamas.
The trial begins again at 10am local time and the superstar could take the stand Wednesday to give crucial evidence against the alleged blackmailers.