Partner claims Thorpe suspect is in Paris but police say case is closed
THE farce over the inquiry into 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 he has been told by officers that they have no interest in reinvestigating his role in the scandal.
Police claimed to have contacted the pilot, whose whereabouts are unknown, as his girlfriend joked that he could be on the run on ‘the other side of Paris’.
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 trying to shut down a farce in which reality and fiction in the form of a BBC 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. 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, was broadcast.
The south Wales force said: ‘Gwent Police is satisfied there is no basis to re-refer the matter to the CPS and the investigation remains closed.’
Speaking at his £1.3million farmhouse on the edge of Dartmoor, Mr Scott said the matter is in the hands of his lawyers.
He has told friends he is convinced there was a ‘conspiracy to murder’.
At Redwin’s home near Dorking, his 61-year-old partner Patricia Frankham said: ‘Mr Redwin does not live here.
‘He’s probably the other side of Paris by now.’
She added: ‘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.’