Angler scares the landlord with a bad line from The Godfather

• Paul Darlington warned Thomas Canning that he would wake up with a donkey’s head
• The Godfather, 1972, shows the severed head of a prized racehorse on a bed

A fisherman used a sinister plan from the Godfather to threaten a wealthy landowner and his family after he was caught poaching animals on their $1.2 million lakeside farm.

Paul Darlington, 36, warned Thomas Canning he would wake up with a donkey’s head in his bed after he was escorted from a farm in Cheshire to illegally fish for rainbow trout.

Darlington, from Ellesmere Port, was later arrested but denied wrongdoing, saying he was threatened first.

During their conversation, Darlington said to Mr Canning: ‘Thanks for showing us around the farm, now we know the design. We know what you have.

‘We’ll come back and break in and we’ll kill the children and let you watch.’

He added: ‘Couldn’t you have behaved better? We know you have donkeys. We will come back at night and kill them. Have you ever woken up with a donkey’s head in your bed?’

In the 1972 film The Godfather, crime family boss Vito ‘Don’ Corleone sends his consigliere to persuade a film producer to give his godfather a role in his latest film.

But when the studio boss refuses and makes a bunch of anti-Italian slurs in the process, he finds the severed head of his prized racehorse in his bed the next morning.

Father-of-two Mr Canning and his wife Katherine – who live on a 17-hectare former fishing village in the village near Chester – are believed to have been left terrified by the incident.

Darlington had previous convictions for assault, was under an anti-social behavior order (ASBO) as a teenager and was jailed for stomping on a man’s head outside a nightclub.

At Chester magistrates’ court, Darlington was ordered to pay £200 compensation to Mr and Mrs Canning after he pleaded guilty to three counts of using threatening behaviour. He was also ordered to pay £100 damages to step son Sean.

Darlington was originally charged with making threats to kill, threatening to cause harm and attempting to illegally catch fish – but the charges were all dropped.

The incident occurred on July 5, 2022 after Darlington and a friend were seen swimming in one of the ponds on private land.

Lisa McGuire, prosecuting, said: ‘Thomas and Katherine Canning are the owners of the land which used to be used for open fishing but is now private property. Thomas was walking around the lake when he saw the defendant and an unknown man with fishing gear and called the police.

‘The incident escalated and Thomas tried to walk the men out of the ground and on the way out, Katherine and Sean were at the gate. But the defendant said to Sean ”What are you looking at? I will crush your face”.

Another man tried to cross the field but Thomas blocked his way. They put down their fishing gear and the situation got worse. The defendant said to Thomas: ”Is this your son? You are dead if you leave here. We got his picture. If he leaves the farm, we will kill him.”

Miss McGuire added: ‘The defendant has four previous convictions out of five. He was last in court on March 2, 2018, for battery. He received a public order. In terms of sentencing the Crown says the first step is a maximum community order and the minimum range is a community order of up to 26 weeks in prison.’

Miss McGuire said there were victim impact statements made by Katherine and Thomas, but Katherine asked that her statement not be read in court. Thomas’ report was not released.

Darlington, who was not represented, told the court: ‘Obviously I did something wrong. I admitted that I had done wrong. I was innocent at first. At first I was scared of my own thing.’

He was also ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work and 20 days of rehabilitation work.

Darlington was given a five-year restraining order not to contact three members of the Canning family named in charges or enter their farm, and ordered to pay £514 in costs and a victim surcharge.

District Judge Jack McGarva told him: ‘The threats that were made were in my view terrible and showed a great deal of arrogance on your part. At the end of the day this was a place where you had to pay to go, not where you could go and do whatever you wanted.

‘The threats were unpleasant, especially the threats to harm one of the pets and then threaten that person. I haven’t seen the victim’s report, but the threats would have been shocking and had lasting effects on them.’

It later emerged that The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola refused to use a fake horse head in the scene so that the crew could find a live one that was scheduled to die in a dog food manufacturer.

This infamous scene was filmed when a horse’s head landed on a set full of dry ice and is now a common cultural reference – and a punch line in sitcoms.