Scott: YOU found man who shot at me... so why couldn’t police?
SCOTT TODAY... AND HOW HE’S PORTRAYED TONIGHT IN BBC DRAMA
JEREMY Thorpe’s former lover Norman Scott hopes that justice will now be done over the attempt to assassinate him more than 40 years ago. Speaking for the first time after Gwent Police again re-opened the conspiracy case – following a series of Mail on Sunday exclusives – a furious Mr Scott condemned past failures of police and prosecutors.
He said Andrew Newton and Dennis Meighan had both publicly admitted their roles in the plot to kill him. Yet neither had ever faced justice. ‘It is utterly shameful,’ said Mr Scott.
It was our revelations which prompted a reopening of the Thorpe case in 2016, but it was closed again last year.
Mr Scott said: ‘The police told me Newton was dead. And of course that would have been convenient for some. If Newton was dead then obviously he couldn’t be prosecuted. And neither could Meighan because Newton was the main witness to Meighan’s role in the conspiracy to murder me. They are both crucial witnesses.
‘The whole affair was covered up by the Establishment at the time and – until now – it seemed to me that Gwent Police was covering it up again.’
It is the police admission now that Newton ‘may not be dead’ which
Senior Crown Prosecutor Nicola Rees in a letter to Norman Scott dated February 22, 2017 has prompted a second reopening of the case by Gwent Police.
‘I never believed Newton was dead, even though the Crown Prosecution Service told me categorically, in writing, last year, that he was,’ Mr Scott said. ‘That CPS letter was presumably based on information from Gwent Police.
‘However, while Newton may have changed his name there was never a shred of evidence that he was deceased. I can’t see why, if they were trying, they could not have tracked the man down. Your newspaper has managed it without too much difficulty.
‘As for Dennis Meighan, Gwent officers informed me two years ago that they were confident of building a case against him and possibly also the police officers who ensured that there was no reference to Jeremy Thorpe in his statement.
‘By then Meighan had already told The Mail on Sunday that he was the original hitman and supplied Newton with a gun after pulling out. But the CPS decided his interview with you wouldn’t be admissible in court and that there was insufficient evidence against the police officer.
‘It’s as though they were seeking reasons for the police inquiry to be wound up. I do now believe that justice can be served and the truth finally revealed.’
During the Jeremy Thorpe trial, Newton appeared as a prosecution witness. He admitted conspiring with the Liberal MP’s close friend and party treasurer David Holmes to ‘silence’ Mr Scott.
And despite making the extraordinary admission, in front of a judge and jury at the Old Bailey, that he had tried to kill the former male model, Newton himself never faced prosecution for that offence. The judge, Mr Justice Cantley, even ordered him not to make a confession ‘speech to the jury’, calling it ‘nonsense’.
It’s believed he struck a deal to give evidence in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
The trial heard that Newton’s first plan was to meet Mr Scott in a bedroom at Kensington’s Royal Garden Hotel and kill him with a chisel concealed in a bunch of flowers. But his nerve failed him. He then lured his target to Exmoor and drew a gun, but it jammed. Newton said he pretended it malfunctioned to ‘frighten’ his target, but shot Mr Scott’s
dog Rinka in the process. He told the 1979 trial: ‘Once the dog was out of the way I could carry on with the plan of frightening Scott.
‘If I had tried levelling the gun at Scott I could not have been sure that the dog would not have had a go at me. The dog was a monstrous size… so I shot it… The thing I’m trying to say… all right, I have admitted trying to kill Norman Scott at the Royal Garden Hotel.’
Mr Justice Cantley replied: ‘You are not on trial here you know.’
Newton responded: ‘I am sorry my lord, I am.’ Cantley said: ‘Well you’re
not. Take that from me and don’t talk nonsense. You can tell us if there is anything that happened on the moor but you are not going to make a speech to the jury.’
Speaking from his Grade I listed medieval Dartmoor longhouse yesterday, Mr Scott said he first tried to link Thorpe with the shooting of Rinka at Newton’s 1976 trial for firearms offences. He blurted out the MP’s name while appearing as the main prosecution witness at Exeter Crown Court.
However, he was prevented from elaborating by the judge. Newton was sentenced to two years for possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
‘The authorities – the police, the courts – all assumed I was a blackmailer,’ said Mr Scott. ‘Why did they do that? Because Andrew Newton planted the idea in their heads right from the start.
‘When he was first interviewed by police over the shooting of Rinka he said he had sent me nude photos of himself from a contact magazine. He claimed I was using these to get money out of him.
‘It was a convenient way to hide his real motive – that he was there to kill me on behalf of Thorpe. I didn’t even know what contact magazines were. But the police bought Newton’s idea and it hung over me in all their subsequent dealings with me.
‘In fact it formed the framework of Thorpe’s defence in court. It was easy for his lawyers to paint me as someone who was trying to blackmail him over our affair. I never did that. It never even occurred to me.
‘All I ever wanted from Thorpe was the return of my national insurance card so that I could work.
‘The new inquiry is wonderful news. I just hope that, this time, the men who tried to kill me will finally face the consequences.’
A spokeswoman for Gwent Police declined to answer questions from The Mail on Sunday, saying only: ‘We have lines of inquiry open and no further comment is available at this time.’
There was never a shred of evidence that Newton was dead... it seemed like another cover-up