A VERY ENGLISH FARCE! (CONT.)
Partner says vanished Thorpe hit-man is ‘other side of Paris’ but police tell him case is closed
THE farce over the investigation of the plot to murder Jeremy Thorpe’s ex-lover deepened last night when the prime suspect appeared to be off the hook.
Police had rushed to the home of Andrew ‘Gino’ Newton, 71, at the weekend after admitting he was not in fact dead – only to discover that he had vanished.
Now it has emerged that he has been told by officers that they have no interest in reinvestigating his role in the scandal and that they are confident there is ‘no basis’ for a fresh inquiry.
Police claimed to have contacted the accomplished pilot, whose whereabouts are unknown, as his girlfriend joked that he could be on the run on ‘the other side of Paris’.
Fellow aviators said they did not know the location of his Italian-registered motor glider plane, which can travel up to 600 miles on a tank of fuel.
Gwent Police said it spoke to Newton, now known as Hann Redwin, to ‘confirm his status and whereabouts’ and that he was ‘unable to provide any additional evidence’.
The force appeared to be scrambling to shut down an extraordinary farce in which reality and fiction in the form of a BBC TV drama collided.
Newton was at the centre of a police inquiry after he was accused of attempting to kill Thorpe’s ex-lover Norman Scott, 78, in a conspiracy orchestrated by the former Liberal leader in 1975.
After Thorpe’s death in 2014, west London petty crook Dennis Meighan said he dropped out of the role of gunman in the £140,000 plot and that Newton took his place. Newton was later convicted of shooting Mr Scott’s dog Rinka. Mr Scott said he escaped only when the gun jammed.
But officers from Gwent Police concluded Newton was dead and the Crown Prosecution Service ruled that no further action could be taken.
Yet at the weekend it was revealed that he is alive and living under a new identity in Surrey as the final episode of A Very English Scandal, starring Hugh Grant as Thorpe, was broadcast.
Last night, the south Wales force insisted the matter remains closed and it will not interview Newton.
Gwent Police said its year- long inquiry focused narrowly on whether police acted corruptly to conceal Thorpe’s role in the scandal.
A spokesman added: ‘ Having confirmed his status and whereabouts, officers from Gwent Police spoke to Mr Redwin, who is unable to provide any additional evidence to that which has already been obtained in the original inquiry.
‘As Mr Redwin’s evidence has already been considered by the CPS prior to this matter being closed, Gwent Police is satisfied there is no basis to re-refer the matter to the CPS and the investigation remains closed.
‘We would like to clarify that at no point has it reopened the original Jeremy Thorpe investigation.’
The police are understood to have based their assessment that Newton was dead on data compiled by a private anti-fraud company. The firm has amassed details of more than 10million deaths that it makes available to public agencies, police and private subscribers. According to its records, Newton, under his new name Hann Redwin, was registered as dead on May 8, 2004. However, no death certificate was ever filed.
If police had Googled his name, they would have discovered evidence of him flying at Redhill aerodrome and posing for photos during a London fetish convention.
Speaking at his £1.3million medieval farmhouse on the edge of Dartmoor, Mr Scott said the matter is in the hands of his lawyers.
Asked whether he would complain to the independent police watchdog, he replied: ‘I am well aware of what I need to do.’
He has told friends he is convinced there was a ‘conspiracy to murder’ and he must ‘ see it through’ to ensure the truth comes out.
At Redwin’s home near Dorking, his 61- year- old partner Patricia Frankham
‘Probably on the other side of Paris’ ‘It’s just gone stupid’
made light of the extraordinary developments. She said: ‘Mr Redwin does not live here. I live here on my own and he remains a good friend. He’s probably the other side of Paris by now.’
She apologised to police whose knock on her door on Sunday went unanswered, saying: ‘I was out.’
She added: ‘This story is 40 years old – it didn’t happen last night. I actually fell asleep through that programme – it was so boring.’
‘This is a TV programme that’s just gone stupid. My life is usually much more quiet, but I’m willing to sell my life story for £500,000.’
HAVInG thoroughly enjoyed John Preston’s brilliant book about the Jeremy Thorpe affair, A Very English Scandal, I was looking forward with relish to the television adaptation.
Some people have criticised the series for turning a conspiracy to murder into a Carry Onstyle romp. But how could it not?
From ‘Bunnies can and will go to France’, to norman Scott’s evidence about ‘ biting the pillow’ and satirist Peter Cook’s sublime parody of the Old Bailey judge’s summing up — ‘You will now retire to consider your verdict of not guilty’ — the whole case was a gold mine of hilarity.
So the producers of the BBC’s version can be forgiven for playing it for laughs. I was pleased to see they included a walk- on part for the late columnist Auberon Waugh, who stood against Thorpe in the 1979 General Election as the Dog Lovers’ Party candidate, in memory of the Great Dane rinka, shot dead on Exmoor during the bungled attempt to kill Scott.
Hugh Grant has rightly been praised for capturing the very essence of Thorpe, an Old Etonian chancer in a felt trilby and camel Crombie — the kind of English gent Arthur Daley aspired to be. In keeping with the Carry On vibe, Ben Whishaw played Scott like a cross between Kenneth Williams and Mick Jagger, with a dollop of Frank Spencer thrown in for good measure.
The TV production didn’t stray far from Preston’s book, a beautifully crafted work of journalism which frequently had me laughing out loud.
Watching the final part on Sunday night, however, there was a scene which gave me pause for reflection. It was when Scott was in the witness box giving evidence about the first time Thorpe had sex with him. When Scott mentioned ‘Vaseline’ and ‘biting the pillow’, the courtroom roared with laughter. As did we all, back in 1979, and again in front of our televisions on Sunday.
And yet. This is not the place to go into the gory details, but when I read the book it was apparent that this incident, which took place in Thorpe’s mother’s house, could not be described by any stretch of the imagination as consensual.
‘rape’ would be a more accurate word. Scott talks about the excruciating physical pain, which reduced him to tears. ‘I thought he was going to kill me.’
THE following day, Thorpe took him for coffee, gave him a £10 note and fixed him up with a room in a lodging house, where the Liberal leader would turn up whenever he felt the need to, as he put it, ‘relieve himself’.
Scott effectively became Thorpe’s catamite, supported financially in exchange for sexual favours.
Their complex, mutually exploitative relationship has been described by Stephen Frears, the director of the TV series, as a ‘love story’. But it certainly didn’t start out like that.
Scott may well have been everything the trial judge said he was: ‘A hysterical, warped personality, Rogues: Thorpe (Grant) and Daley accomplished sponger . . . a fraud, a whiner, a parasite.’ But it was Thorpe who had the whip hand, the real power.
When they met, Thorpe was an MP, Scott a 21-year-old stable boy. Try looking at this through a modern telescope.
We live in an age of #MeToo hysteria, in which powerful older men have had their careers destroyed for allegedly preying on younger women. An inadvertent brush of the knee, an ‘inappropriate’ glance, a clumsy pass are judged to be akin to rape itself.
We’ve had the moral panic over Jimmy Savile, the absurd Paedos In High Places inquiry, the hounding of ageing disc-jockeys and TV personalities, and all manner of false allegations made against long-dead politicians.
Some celebrities have been convicted of ‘historic’ sex offences. But, to the best of my knowledge, no one has suggested that Jimmy Savile’s crimes should be turned into a prime-time comedy drama series.
Thorpe comes out of A Very English Scandal as a thoroughly bad egg, whose attempts to have Scott killed were covered up by a complicit Establishment.
Curiously, though, there has been little condemnation of the sexual dynamic between the two men. If anything, it has been treated sympathetically.
Yes, I’m well aware that in the Sixties, when they first met, homosexuality was still a crime. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since those unenlightened days.
regardless, the TV adaptation makes clear that Thorpe was a serial sexual predator, routinely seducing impressionable young men.
Yet although the police have inevitably had to get in on the act, they haven’t (so far) held a press conference outside Thorpe’s old house, appealing for more of his ‘victims’ to come forward.
I can’t help wondering if the reaction might have been different if norman Scott had been a 21year-old stable girl called norma.
What if Thorpe had raped norma so violently that she had sustained injuries which reduced her to tears, afraid he was going to kill her?
And then given her money and installed her in a bedsitting room, so that he could visit her for sexual gratification whenever he felt the urge. Would we still find that quite so hilarious a subject for Sunday night TV entertainment?
Somehow, I suspect not.