They had just returned from a round of golf, laid out the appetizers and poured the wine when the doorbell rang.

The young man outside, wearing only underwear, was shivering. He was muddy, his face was bruised and swollen and he stood there crying.

“It certainly looked like he had been beaten. … He was very upset, shivering and shaking,” Donna Amelotte testified on Monday at the kidnapping-and-torture trial of Laura Brahaney 27, and Jake Hopwood, 28.

The young, autistic man had come out of the woods looking for help after a harrowing ordeal that began on Facebook. Two days earlier, on Sept. 4, 2014, he had been lured online with the promise of a hookup with another woman, but when he answered his apartment door, it was Laura Brahaney who was there, according to the Crown.

Brahaney turned back and stepped outside saying she needed to text her mother, court heard.

“In reality, she was turning back to open the (lobby) door for her accomplices. At this point, the trap was sprung,” prosecutor Matthew Geigen-Miller told court.

The man, 25, was beaten, bound, gagged and blindfolded. His Ottawa apartment was looted, taking his TV, his computer — they even stole the vacuum cleaner, Geigen-Miller told court. Then they showed him the backseat of a car and made him rehearse a ransom demand before forcing him to call his father for money from a pay phone out in Cumberland.

(The scenes of the robbery and the ransom call were captured on security video obtained by police. In the footage, someone can be seen lugging out stolen goods from the victim’s apartment.)

The ransom plan quickly failed because it was 4 a.m. and the victim’s father didn’t answer any of the calls, court heard.

According to the Crown, the young man — described by police as child-like — was forced into a dog cage in Brahaney’s basement where he was kept for 24 hours. The dog cage was so small he was unable to stretch, and was denied a washroom.

The Crown alleges that while the victim was still hunched in a cage down in the basement, Brahaney was already on social media plotting her next robbery, this one in Toronto.

On the way to Toronto, the accused kidnappers are alleged to have pulled over by a wooded area off the highway and close to the St. Lawrence River. Blindfolded and gagged, the victim was taken into the woods and beaten again. One of his kidnappers, court heard, choked him until he was unconscious and left him for dead.

But the young man made it out of the woods, and to safety at a home where longtime friends were getting ready to cap a day of golf with supper.

They first wondered if they should let him in out of fear. But they did and they showed him a chair. (The last time he had been in a chair it was in a basement, and he was tied to it.) They gave the shivering man a blanket and called 911. And then he called his mom.

Supper would never be the same. Donna Amelotte, a nurse, told court that it looked as if the man had burn marks around his ankles and wrists, and said he complained of pain in his neck and face.

Her husband, David Amelotte, also testified, recalling at the judge-alone trial that the man’s face looked severely swollen, and that one of his eyes was closed. The young man was barefoot, dirty and confused, and had marks on his wrist, Amelotte, a business executive, testified.

A police detective who interviewed the victim described him as being “unable to walk.”

Brahaney and Hopwood have pleaded not guilty while two other people pleaded guilty in the kidnapping-and-torture case that continues later this week with Ontario Court Justice Hugh Fraser presiding.

Defence lawyer Michael Smith is representing Brahaney and Leo Russomanno is defending Hopwood.

gdimmock@postmedia.com

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