Cop says Travolta defendant burned document

Form was related to treatment of actor’s 16-year-old son, Jett

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updated 4:27 p.m. ET Oct. 8, 2009

NASSAU, Bahamas - A Bahamas police officer testified Thursday that a woman on trial for allegedly trying to blackmail John Travolta acknowledged burning a document at the center of the case.

Pleasant Bridgewater, one of two defendants in the alleged plot to demand $25 million from the movie star, told police the day she was arrested that she destroyed the form with Travolta’s signature “after she noticed the situation was about to explode,” Detective Deborah Thompson said.

The document was related to the treatment of Travolta’s 16-year-old son, Jett, who suffered a seizure at a family vacation home on Grand Bahama island. It would have released the ambulance driver of liability had the youth been flown to the U.S. for treatment, as Travolta initially wanted.

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Jett instead was taken to a hospital where he died on Jan. 2.

Travolta has testified that the ambulance driver, Tarino Lightbourne, threatened to sell the media stories suggesting he was at fault in his son’s death.

Bridgewater, who is accused of negotiating on Lightbourne’s behalf, is a lawyer who resigned from the Bahamas senate following her arrest on Jan. 22. Both defendants have pleaded not guilty to extortion.

Thompson testified she was searching Bridgewater’s law office when the defendant said she would not find the document. Bridgewater said she had burned it and flushed it down the toilet at her house. Police then went to the house and police took a candle as evidence, Thompson said.

Thompson was among the final prosecution witnesses at the trial that began Sept. 21.

Defense lawyers plan to call four witnesses including a doctor from the resort community who first treated Jett and a paramedic who accompanied Lightbourne to the house.