Court to decide on Nazi chalice

Ownership of the chalice will be decided in January 2004

A silver chalice said to have belonged to Hitler's aide Hermann Goering is at the centre of an ownership row.

The chalice, which could be worth £2m, has been disputed since it first surfaced as part of a bizarre blackmail case at Newcastle Crown Court last year.

Derrick Smith had kidnapped the dog of his former landlady and demanded the chalice as ransom.

Mr Smith, 52, of Tuscan Road, Sunderland, was jailed for nine months at Newcastle Crown Court in March 2002 for an offence of blackmail.

But he was freed at London's Court of Appeal by Mr Justice Wright and Judge Ann Goddard QC, who reduced his "manifestly excessive" sentence to six weeks.

Disputed loan

A hearing was held at Sunderland County Court on Thursday to decide if the chalice belongs to either party.

The case was adjourned until January 2004 for a circuit judge to rule if the chalice belongs to either of the pair in dispute, or to the official receiver who also could have a claim on the item.

The Sunderland woman said: "I am not able to work and this is the only way I have of getting what is owed to me.

"Bit I think if the official receiver has a justifiable claim then he should get it."

The court case in 2002 heard how the roots of the case lay in a disputed £40,000 loan the woman claimed to have made to Mr Smith in 1995 for a business venture that eventually failed.

Mr Smith denied having received any money.

Death sentence

On 10 June 2001, the woman received a phone call from Mr Smith informing her he had taken her Boxer dog Benjy.

He said if she did not return the chalice she would not get the dog back.

The chalice is now being held by Northumbria Police.

It was brought back to Sunderland by a soldier who took it from Goering's holiday home as the Allies moved into Germany at the end of World War II.

Goering was responsible for the Nazi economy and the Luftwaffe, was notorious for his collection of looted art.

He was sentenced to death by the Nuremberg war trials but committed suicide.