(Image: North Yorkshire Police)
An international gun marksman and paedophile had kilos of chemicals and other items capable of being turned into improvised explosive devices, York Crown Court heard.
Geoffrey Crossland, 78, kept the illegal powders and liquids in a secret underground bunker in a field on his farm in Padside, near Harrogate, said Stephen Wood KC, prosecuting.
Police found them in the same raid that discovered his cache of illegal firearms and ammunition in 2018, but didn’t charge him until recently.
The chemicals could have made more than 30 kilos of explosives.
Police found a copy of a “terrorist cookbook”, relating to the making of an improvised explosive device (IED) at the farm, which Mr Wood said could be downloaded from the internet.
The barrister said the prosecution did not suggest that Crossland ever used the chemicals to make explosive devices. However, it was illegal for him to have the chemicals.
They had also found more than two million indecent images and videos of children in 2018.
Alistair MacDonald KC, defending, said: “The only person at risk here was the defendant. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he had nefarious purposes as far as these items are concerned.”
He said that there had been an eight-year delay between the finding of the chemicals and court case, and Crossland had been sentenced in 2019 to a sentence of 12 years and eight months for the firearms offences and downloading indecent images of children.
“There are exceptional circumstances in this case,” he said.
Crossland pleaded guilty to possessing explosive materials illegally. He is currently on prison licence, having been released on November 12, 2024, partway through the 2019 sentence.
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The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, said Crossland had not reoffended since his release from prison and was complying with all the orders and restrictions placed upon him by the probation service.
He would remain on licence until June 2031 and the judge did not consider Crossland to be a danger.
He gave him a 31-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months. Crossland is already on the sex offenders' register for life.
Mr MacDonald said Crossland had been captain of a trap shooting team representing the UK internationally and his social circle was all related to shooting, but the conditions of his prison licence meant he could have no contact with the shooting community.
He was now a lonely man with a difficult life.
Mr Wood said when police found the chemicals they had sent them to a now disbanded Minstry of Defence laboratory for analysis.