A former British soldier who is on trial for people smuggling has told a jury that he was previously jailed for kidnapping a bank manager's wife and demanding a £40,000 ransom.

Tony Williams was a 28-year-old financial advisor when he kept Elizabeth Kerr bound and gagged in the boot of a car for more than four hours.

He admitted kidnapping the 38-year-old in August 1992, robbing her husband David of £40,000 and demanding £75,000 from another bank manager in an earlier failed kidnap attempt of his wife.

Williams, now 61, told the jury that he was jailed for 14 years for those crimes.

He is standing trial at Plymouth Crown Court for conspiring to smuggle illegal migrants into the UK from France.

He has admitted making more than half a dozen voyages to smuggle in more than 70 migrants across the Channel landing them on beaches in south Devon.

Liverpool-born Williams. who joined the Army in 1983, said he was a 'very good soldier' who was up for SAS selection. But he bought himself out in 1987 after he was busted and later demoted while in Norway for 'entertaining aliens' - two female Royal Artillery - in a hotel room with a comrade.

He told the jury he then got into selling products but killed a young woman in a car crash in 1992 which also badly injured his wife.

He ended up a PTSD 'mess' thinking he was going to be jailed, then committed the kidnap and blackmail crimes.

He told the court that he was not arrested for those crimes for 14 months - only after a photofit was shown on Crimewatch and his own family jokingly said 'you were on Crimewatch'.

Williams, of Lydford in West Devon, told the jury that he was approached by a stranger to reclaim money owed to him from a business venture - and they gave him £21,000 of what he was 'owed' but then demanded he worked for them.

He told the court threats were made about the safety of his second wife and children as his past criminal history became known.

Williams said he was left terrified when he met his English 'controller and handler' during a family holiday in Spain and he became 'a chattel and a slave'.

The court heard he initially used a 33-foot ketch, Sea Dreamer, to go to France to collect migrants and drop them off at night on south Devon beaches.

He told the jury he was due to be paid £3,500 per migrant but he only got 60 per cent of that even though he claims the gang bosses were making £20,000 per person.

He then got a quicker boat and transported 40 people in three trips - with 17 people being dropped off at the beach at Slapton Sands in south Devon in June 2022.

In December 2022 Williams was arrested at his home but bailed.

The prosecution said in July 2023 Williams was seen smuggling migrants at Mothecombe on the south Devon coast with a second man, Monet Roberts.

Williams claims he was compelled to act as he did out of fear for the lives of his family but the Crown reject this, saying he was 'enticed and encouraged by the rewards'.

He said his home is worth £1 million but he did not declare any money to the taxman between 2016-23 but made money from selling puppies, Bitcoin trading and winning £300,000 in running races organised by two organised crime gangs when he said he was 'running for his life’.

Roberts, of London, said he was hoodwinked into the enterprise and did not know what was going on. Both men deny charges of conspiring to assist in the unlawful immigration into the UK. Their trial continues.