There were no gasps in court when the guilty verdicts were read out. No spasms of outrage nor cries of triumph came forth from those in the public gallery.

And most piercingly, there were no grieving family members overcome by the death of a loved one and the bitter balm of seeing justice delivered at last.

Perhaps we should expect nothing less from this extraordinary criminal trial, one in which the murder victim was a tree and the two men accused of killing it seemed to have crawled straight out of Middle Earth.

At Newcastle Crown Court this week, former best friends Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, protested their innocence right to the end, even in the face of much evidence to the contrary.

On the stand and in person these two hobbity men from deepest Cumbria were about as convincing as Gollum at a cocktail party.

Graham’s car and phone had been located by police forensics near the Sycamore Gap tree site in the dead of night, around the very moment it had been cut down.

But do you know what? Someone had borrowed them. People frequently borrowed his belongings from the yard outside the caravan where he lived and from where he ran his groundworking business.

Former best friends Daniel Graham, 39, (pictured) and Adam Carruthers, 32, both from Cumbria, were yesterday found guilty of chopping down a century-old sycamore tree in the early hours of September 28, 2023

Pictured: Adam Carruthers, a farmyard mechanic who specialises in the upkeep of chainsaws. He told the jury he didn’t know much about chainsaws, even when they were shown a photograph of him at work surrounded by eight chainsaws

Pictured: the Sycamore Tree Gap which flourished in Northumberland alongside Hadrian’s Wall. It became a location for marriage proposals, a place of pilgrimage, a site for ashes to be scattered, and even a scene in the Kevin Costner film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

 Carruthers is a farmyard mechanic who specialises in the upkeep of chainsaws. He told the jury he didn’t know much about chainsaws, even when they were shown a photograph of him at work surrounded by eight chainsaws.

The two men sometimes worked together, pooling their expertise in one highly significant area – the felling of trees using chainsaws.

If this were a film instead of a national arboreal tragedy it would be called Dumb and Dumber: The Lumber Years.

Still, it took some five hours of chin-stroking from the jury to reach a verdict, which was delivered at 10.45am yesterday.

Both men were found guilty on two counts of criminal damage – to the tree itself and to Hadrian’s Wall, which was damaged when the sycamore fell.

Throughout the ten-day trial the ex-pals sat far apart in the glass-fronted dock, never once speaking to nor acknowledging each other.

Graham watched while Carruthers gave evidence, but Carruthers did not look up once when Graham was on the stand, his lowered head barely visible above the dock.

Graham blamed Carruthers but Carruthers did not blame anyone. His defence was that he wasn’t even there. 

Pictured: the felled Sycamore Gap Tree in Northumberland

 Graham and Carruthers, seen here in a court sketch, were arrested in connection with the felling of the tree in October 2023. Yesterday in court, the two men showed no emotion in the dock as they were found guilty on both counts

Prosecutors told Newcastle Crown Court photos were found on Daniel Graham’s phone after his arrest showing a piece of the Sycamore Gap tree and a chainsaw in the back of his Range Rover

Police forensics located his car near the site hours before the crime was committed and it was the prosecution’s contention that he was doing a recce for what they called this ‘moronic mission’.

Carruthers insisted that was not the case: he was driving his girlfriend Amy Connor, their 11-day-old baby and three-year-old daughter out for dinner.

He claimed they left their static caravan home near Wigton to drive to Gateshead for a meal but turned back because the baby was unsettled.

Amy was recovering from a C-section birth and nursing a newborn, but according to him she was pleased to embark on a three-hour round trip of nearly 150 miles.

It was also Carruthers’ defence that he was at home later that night when the tree was cut down. 

So why, the prosecution wanted to know, had he sent his girlfriend Facebook messages at 1.30am if he was with her? He did not want to disturb the baby, he said. Or perhaps Amy was far away in the west wing of the static caravan?

Carruthers claimed to have been sending her images of the storm damage on the roof of the caravan site’s wash house – some women have all the luck – not footage captured on Graham’s phone of the Sycamore Gap tree crashing to the ground.

Towards the end of the trial, Richard Wright KC for the prosecution spoke for all of us when he asked the jury: ‘Does this sound like the truth or manufactured, arrant nonsense?’

Graham (left) blamed Carruthers (right) but Carruthers did not blame anyone. His defence was that he wasn’t even there 

You have to wonder why the lawyers involved didn’t beg both of the accused to plead guilty, accept the consequences and a much lighter sentence. Perhaps they did, but Graham and Carruthers individually decided to brazen it out instead, in a doomed attempt to outfox justice.

On most days, Graham wore to court what appeared to be the same crumpled shirt and glum expression. With his thinning, russet hair and furrowed face, he looks decades older than his age and exuded a palpable air of beaten-down neglect.

When he gave evidence, those of us in the press benches had a clear view of the back of his heavily tattooed neck and the fact that he kept his hands shoved in his pockets throughout, as if he were about to examine a bit of turf.

‘Possibly,’ was his standard evasive reply when being cross-examined. He often became belligerent when pressed to account for himself and one could only admire Mr Wright, who has a touch of the Alastair Sim about him, for his unwavering politesse in the face of such provocation.

Graham accused his prosecutor of ‘trying to make a fool of me’, ‘calling me a liar’ and the heinous sin of being ‘more educated than me’. 

When asked by Mr Wright why he didn’t hear someone taking his car from his yard that night, Graham responded by explaining that the wind made it very noisy inside the caravan but ‘you wouldn’t know as you have probably never been in one’.

Mr Wright courteously confirmed he had indeed been inside a caravan and the case moved on.

Carruthers, with his pelt of gingery hair shaved at the sides, made a slightly better fist of giving evidence, even if at times he seemed like a shifty ferret caught in the headlights.

On most days, Graham (pictured) wore to court what appeared to be the same crumpled shirt and glum expression. With his thinning, russet hair and furrowed face, he looks decades older than his age and exuded a palpable air of beaten-down neglect

Carruthers (pictured), with his pelt of gingery hair shaved at the sides, made a slightly better fist of giving evidence, even if at times he seemed like a shifty ferret caught in the headlights

‘I wouldn’t like to comment,’ was his standard, evasive reply. ‘That’s your chainsaw, isn’t it?’ he was asked, when shown a photograph. 

‘I wouldn’t like to comment, they change so often,’ he replied. In court he wore a too-big navy suit; the trousers concertinaed around his chisel-toe slip-ons, the jacket hanging straight down from his shoulders like a sandwich board.

‘I can’t see what all the fuss was about, it was only a tree,’ he shrugged, giving evidence on the fifth day of the trial. The outpouring of public grief that followed the Sycamore Gap tree being destroyed seemed to suggest he was much mistaken.

The British love their trees, which have been an important part of our culture since pagan times, worshipped then and now as a symbol of growth and renewal. They feature on crests and heraldic coats of arms and are an evocative presence in art, celebrated from Turner and Constable to Hockney and beyond.

And there was something extra special about the Sycamore Gap tree which made it a much-loved national landmark, a totem of cultural and historical importance.

 Why? It had a certain majesty. It was alone but not lonely. It grew strong in its solitude and flourished here in Northumberland alongside Hadrian’s Wall – built by the Romans to mark the northern frontier of their empire.

The Sycamore Gap tree became a location for marriage proposals, a place of pilgrimage, a site for ashes to be scattered, and even a scene in the Kevin Costner film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

It meant a great deal to a great many people, all of whom are the real victims here.

A report by the Forestry Commission described the awful moment the once beloved tree was discovered, stating: ‘The tree was lying on its side, its boughs embedded in the ground by the force of the fall’

Pictured: forensic investigators at the scene. The two men found guilty drove for 40 minutes from the Carlisle area during Storm Agnes to cut down the tree in the pitch black

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BREAKING NEWS

Two men are found GUILTY of chopping down beloved Sycamore Gap tree

During the early days of the trial it was poignant to hear the statements read out from the various official bodies who were the keepers of the tree and the guardians of the wall.

These included the Northumberland National Park Authority; the inspector of ancient monuments; the National Trust; Historic England; and the Forestry Commission themselves, whose report seemed to suggest quiet sorrow at the loss of a friend.

‘The tree was lying on its side, its boughs embedded in the ground by the force of the fall,’ the report read.

In this ghastly how-dunnit, the Commission also detailed the murder method: the tree was ‘brought down by the hinge and wedge technique’. The wedge, which was taken as a trophy, was never recovered.Surveying the damage on the morning after, some of the National Park rangers were close to tears. ‘Visibly upset,’ noted one police report.

You have to wonder what kind of a society produces two men so intellectually and emotionally stunted that their biggest achievement in life has been to create a stump.

Two men mossed over with such insensitivity that they now face up to ten years each in prison.

Yet you also must wonder if that same society is making too much fuss over the killing of a tree, and not a person.

Indeed, there are some who question whether such a high-profile prosecution is a good use of taxpayers’ money. A Crown Court trial with four bewigged barristers – two for the prosecution, one each for Graham and Carruthers, plus lawyers in support – costs at least £20,000 per day.

‘The one thing they continue to share is the basic lack of decency and courage to own up to what they did,’ said Richard Wright KC for the prosecution in his closing speech. Pictured: a court sketch of Graham and Carruthers

In a courtroom panelled with oak, the men who slayed a sycamore slipped out from the public gaze without ever addressing the biggest question of all – why the hell they did it in the first place

Graham and Carruthers’ costs are paid for by Legal Aid – you and me, in other words.

Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers pleaded not guilty – as is entirely their right – but in doing so they exposed themselves to the full force of the law, which came crashing down upon them like, well, a fallen tree trunk.

Yet everyone, from the trial judge Mrs Justice Lambert down, did everything possible to give these men a fair trial and treat them both with a courtesy and respect they did not always deserve.

‘They’ve fallen out spectacularly along the way, but they are reunited in this court before you, the jury, and the one thing they continue to share, that is the basic lack of decency and courage to own up to what they did,’ said Mr Wright in his closing speech.

The jury went out at 11.51 am on Thursday and returned at 10.45 am yesterday. The two men showed no emotion in the dock as they were found guilty on both counts. They still did not look at each other, even as they were taken down.

We might never know exactly what happened on that dark and stormy night in September 2023, except that the men drove for 40 minutes from the Carlisle area during Storm Agnes to cut down the tree in the pitch black, with one of them filming the destruction on a phone.

The likelihood is that Carruthers wielded the chainsaw while Graham filmed the action – but it was the prosecution’s case that the men acted together and were equally to blame. So what next for these chainsaw-wielding, hobbit vandals?

For me, it was still possible to believe that justice had been done while experiencing a sense of sadness at the outcome.

Wickedness and depravity can put you in jail, but so, too, can plain old stupidity.

In a courtroom panelled with oak, the men who slayed a sycamore slipped out from the public gaze without ever addressing the biggest question of all – why the hell they did it in the first place.

Did they get what they deserved? Possibly. I wouldn’t like to comment.