How Sycamore Gap fellers went from friends to foes

Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers were best mates when they illegally felled the much-loved Sycamore Gap tree together. How did they end up turning on each other?

It is hard to imagine they were once friends.

Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers used to phone each other every day and met up several times a week but, as they stood in the dock at Newcastle Crown Court, waiting for the verdicts to be returned, they looked like complete strangers.

The prosecution called them "the odd couple" who did everything together.

They became friends about four years ago.

Carruthers was a mechanic and did Graham "a good turn" by fixing his dad's Land Rover, making a special job of it so it could be used for Graham's father's funeral.

Graham was a ground worker and he enlisted the man he called his "best pal" to help him on jobs, with tasks including the felling of trees for which they split the cash 50/50.

Then one night, during Storm Agnes in 2023, the friends went to Sycamore Gap.

Under the cover of darkness, they trekked across marshland in winds of up to 60mph and used their experience to mark the trunk, cut a wedge out of it so they knew which direction it would fall and then cut it down with a chainsaw.

They filmed it and watched the sycamore crashing to the ground.

What they didn't realise is that the phone and vehicle they used would be tracked and the conversations they had would be discovered.

As the police questioning began, their stories unravelled and so did their friendship.

Graham's phone was used to film the felling.

Road and CCTV cameras captured his Range Rover going to and from Steel Rigg, the nearest public car park to the tree.

He told the court his car and phone were used by other people, including Adam Carruthers "who didn't need to ask".

Prosecutor Richard Wright was incredulous at his claims, telling jurors: "According to Graham he didn't go out all night and Carruthers took his car and phone while he slept in blissful ignorance, and his large dog let out not so much as a growl."

It wasn't the only story that was mocked in court.

Carruthers' phone had been traced to Northumberland the day the tree was felled.

It was suggested to him he was scoping the area out.

He told the court he was taking his partner out on a three-hour round trip for a meal at the Metrocentre in Gateshead after she'd recently given birth, but their baby started crying so they turned the car around at a spot that just happened to be near the tree.

Christopher Knox, Graham's barrister, said: "You're telling the jury in spite of the fact she wasn't well enough to lift a baby, you were going 65 miles with [your partner] and a new-born?"

Mr Wright asked Carruthers why they didn't just go for dinner in Carlisle, a short drive from their home.

Carruthers agreed there were restaurants in the Cumbrian city but they were "not the best".

He claimed he was at home all night, fixing the roof of his shed and washing some clothes.

Since that night, the court heard the pair had fallen out spectacularly.

Carruthers' barrister Andrew Gurney said Graham named his former friend as the culprit because he needed a scapegoat.

"Having found himself in the dock, [Graham's] reached desperately for a lifeline," Mr Gurney said, adding: "He tried to throw Adam Carruthers under the bus to save his own skin."

Graham initially told police he knew who had cut down the tree but would not "grass" as the culprit had young children, a not so subtle nod towards his friend.

When he felt police were still paying too much attention to him and not enough to Carruthers, he showed officers a picture of his friend holding some owls while standing next to a box of chainsaws.

In August 2024, some 11 months after the felling, he made an anonymous call to police to name Carruthers outright.

Officers recognised Graham's voice immediately and he was forced to admit to jurors he had indeed made the call.

Both men said the friendship ended abruptly one night in the aftermath of the felling and their arrests.

Graham drove to Carruthers' home and said they each had to go their own way, and that was that.

Mr Knox said his client had been accused of being "stroppy" while giving evidence in court, engaging in heated clashes with Mr Wright.

"Does that make him the Sycamore Gap tree murderer?" he asked the jury , or "does it mean exactly what he said in his police interviews - he's been dropped in this?"

Jurors clearly thought the former.

Emotions were running high right to the very end of the trial when the judge told them both to expect a significant period of time in custody.

As Graham was led away from the dock, he had an angry exchange with a member of the public.

We still don't know which of the pair cut down the tree and which filmed it.

The prosecution said it didn't matter, that they were "in it together, from first to last".

They might have fallen out but they were side by side again in court, united by the two things they will forever share - guilt at destroying a globally-beloved landmark and too much cowardice to admit it.

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