Flamboyant Liberal leader wound up at the Old Bailey accused of murder plot

Liberal leader Thorpe is arrested

JEREMY Thorpe was at the heart of one of the biggest scandals to rock British politics.

He was elected leader of the Liberal Party in 1967 and became one of the most recognisable politicians of the day, almost taking the Liberals into Coalition with the Tories in 1974, on the promise of a Cabinet post.

“It’s always struck me as being very relevant that in 1974, Britain had two general elections,” says Prof David Wilson. “Labour won both of them, and it wasn’t until 1979 when Margaret Thatcher won, that the Conservatives regained power.

“Interestingly, much of the Conservative election manifesto was around crime and punishment. There was a feeling Britain was out of control.”

Thorpe’s first wife, Caroline, had died in a car crash in 1970, leaving him to raise their young son alone. Three years later he married Marion Stein, who was divorced from the Queen’s first cousin, the Earl of Harewood.

Known for his flair on the campaign trail, Thorpe loved a good party and famously wore a brown trilby hat.

But he also had a string of relationships with men, which were a closely guarded secret in London. In a 2015 biography, it said Thorpe “boasted to friends that he had seduced TV cameramen, footmen at Buckingham

Palace receptions, even policemen on duty at the House of Commons.”

At the time of Princess Margaret’s wedding to Anthony Armstrong-Jones, he sent a friend a postcard, saying: “What a pity about HRH. I rather hoped to marry the one and seduce the other.”

But it was a dangerous time to be gay. And his alleged affair with Norman Scott blew Thorpe’s life and career to bits.

Described as a “stable boy and model,” Scott claimed he and Thorpe had a brief fling in the early sixties, but that his lover had treated him badly. In 1975, Scott was confronted as he walked his Great Dane, Rinka, left, on a rural road in Exmoor. The gunman, Andrew Newton, shot the dog, but the gun allegedly jammed as he went to shoot Scott.

Following this, Scott spoke about his relationship with Thorpe in court. Disgraced Thorpe resigned as leader, but denied Scott’s allegations.

But it was then suggested he and three other men were behind the failed attempt to kill Scott, that he’d hired the hitman in a bid to silence his former lover.

Tried for conspiracy to murder, they walked free from the Old Bailey.

Speaking in 2008, Thorpe said: “If it happened now I think… the public would be kinder. Back then they were very troubled by it.”

He died aged 85 in 2014 after three decades battling Parkinson’s Disease.

With Marion in 74

Norman Scott

From top: Stephen Holmes, Malcolm Barlow, Stephen Sinclair and Billy Sutherland

Carl Stottor gave evidence

The horrific murders committed by twisted Dennis Nilsen only came to light when a plumber found human remains blocking the drain at his flat.

“His crimes were extraordinary,” says criminologist Professor David Wilson. “He was a serial killer interested in power and control. Nilsen was a genuine cannibal, necrophiliac and trophy killer.”

All of Nilsen’s victims were either gay or homeless men. Nilsen was gay, but never comfortable with his desires.

Born in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Nilsen enlisted in the Army aged 16, and had an 11-year career. During a stint working as a butcher in the catering corps, he learned skills that would serve him when he turned to murder. After leaving the Army in 1972, he took up police training, and developed a fascination with morgue visits and autopsied bodies.

Yet he quit after just a year and became a Jobcentre worker, a role he kept until his arrest a decade later.

Nilsen’s first brush with the law came in 1973, after a young man looking for a job accused Nilsen of taking photos when he was asleep in his flat. Nilsen was questioned but released without charge.

In 1975, he started living with David Gallichan in a garden flat in Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, North West London. Gallichan has denied a sexual relationship. When he moved out two years later, Nilsen spiralled into loneliness worsened by sexual encounters.

He met his first victim, Stephen Holmes, 14, in a pub on December 29,

Nilsen at court in 1983

1978, and invited him back to the flat. The following morning, when Holmes tried to leave, Nilsen, then 33, throttled the teenager with a tie before drowning him in a bucket of water.

Still wanting to keep Holmes by him, he washed the corpse in his bathroom, put it in his bed and slept beside it.

For the next seven months Holmes’ body lay decaying beneath the floorboards before Nilsen burned the remains in his garden.

He would not kill again for a while. But in October 1979 a young student accused Nilsen of trying to strangle him during a bondage-play session. No charges were brought.

“In the Seventies, a couple of young men escaped Nilsen,” says Prof Wilson. “Being gay was still not widely accepted. It became legal in 1967. The