THORPE SCANDAL PROBE TO REOPEN
POLICE ACCUSED OF ‘COVER-UP’: PAGE 13
AN INVESTIGATION into the Jeremy Thorpe scandal will be re-opened after Gwent Police admitted it may have wrongly assumed one of the suspects was dead.
A probe launched in 2015 into the alleged attempted murder of the former Liberal leader’s gay ex-lover Norman Scott was closed last year.
Gwent Police had thought Andrew Newton – the man allegedly hired to kill Mr Scott – was dead.
But Mr Scott was told the investigation was over after the force concluded Mr Newton, who was jailed for firearms offences over the shooting of Mr Scott’s dog on Exmoor in 1975, was no longer alive.
But the force has told a BBC Four documentary – which aired last night – that new information has come to light, suggesting he may still be alive.
Gwent Police told the makers of The Jeremy Thorpe Scandal: “Enquiries were completed which indicated Mr Newton was deceased.
“We have now revisited these enquiries and have identified information, which indicates that Mr Newton may still be alive. As a result, further enquiries will be conducted to trace Mr Newton to assess if he is able to assist the investigation.”
Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday yesterday reported that it has discovered Newton living under an alias in Surrey. They published a picture of a man they claimed is Newton.
The paper said detectives will now interview the former airline pilot over claims he hired a former school friend to murder Norman Scott, but stepped in himself when his friend changed his mind.
Four years ago, Dennis Meighan, now 71, admitted to the newspaper that in 1975 he was offered £13,500 – the equivalent of £140,000 today – by Newton and a ‘representative’ of Thorpe to silence Scott.
They feared he was threatening to publicly reveal details of their affair, which took place at a time when homosexuality was still illegal.
The documentary, shown after last night’s conclusion of lauded threepart BBC drama A Very English Scandal, was based on the accounts of Panorama reporter Tom Mangold.
In 1979 he led an investigation into the trial of Jeremy Thorpe and others.
Convinced that the former Liberal Party leader would be found guilty, a special post-trial programme was prepared, but it was scrapped when they were acquitted. The programme had remained unseen for almost 40 years but was edited and updated.
Reacting to the news there would be a further investigation, Mr Scott, 78, told the programme: “I just don’t think anyone’s tried hard enough to look for him. I really don’t.
“There would surely be a record of him dying.
“I thought (Gwent Police) were doing something at last and soon found out that absolutely they weren’t, they were continuing the cover-up as far as I can see”.
The documentary looks into the alleged plot to murder Mr Scott, who was involved in a relationship with Mr Thorpe in the early 1960s.
Mr Thorpe, who died in 2014, was acquitted of conspiracy to murder after an Old Bailey trial in 1979.
He was acquitted alongside John Le Mesurier, who ran a carpet warehouse in Bridgend, and George Deakin, a fruit machine salesman from Port Talbot.
Journalist Mr Mangold told The Sunday Times ahead of last night’s screening: “My documentary will finally be shown. It reveals that MI5 kept copious files on Thorpe and that the Metropolitan Police hid its own files on him in a senior officer’s private safe so that no one – including other members of the police – could access them.”
He said that not only did the plot fail, it was evidence “of a cover-up by senior figures in politics, the police and security services” and that his documentary proves that.
Mr Mangold explained that more than 30 years after the case, while walking his dog in London, he met Dennis Meighan by chance.
“He claimed he had given Scotland Yard detectives a full written confession in about 1978, in which he admitted attending a meeting at a west London café in 1975 at which the conspiracy to murder Scott was discussed and a contract to kill agreed – with him to pull the trigger.
“Also attending this meeting were a former pilot named Andrew Newton and David Holmes. The latter was Thorpe’s closest friend. He had been the best man at Thorpe’s wedding and was an assistant treasurer of the Liberal Party.
“Meighan said that while the three men sat in the Ritz cafe in Shepherd’s Bush, Holmes informed him that Thorpe was being pestered by a man named Norman Scott, who had become “a major nuisance” to the party. For £13,500, Holmes wanted him murdered.”
As the owner of the gun used in a botched attempt on Mr Scott’s life, Meighan told him he had been interviewed in his kitchen by three men he assumed were Scotland Yard detectives.
“The true identity of these men remains a mystery,” he said.
Mr Meighan said he gave a statement detailing a meeting in a café with a former pilot named Andrew Newton and David Holmes. He signed the statement despite being warned he could face prison for supplying the gun.
“That statement, prima facie evidence of the murder conspiracy ordered by Thorpe, has since vanished,” said Mr Mangold.
Months later he was asked to sign a new statement. He said this statement “did Thorpe and me no end of favours . . . It never mentioned him nor the conspiracy and it never mentioned me being the owner of the gun. I couldn’t wait to sign.” Meighan was in effect freed. “The damning evidence against Thorpe, which should have put him behind bars, was gone. In Thorpe’s trial at the Old Bailey in 1979 Meighan was not even called as a prosecution witness,” he said.
Holmes, the other figure at the café meeting, kept silent. He was a codefendant with Thorpe in the conspiracy to murder trial but, like the Liberal MP, refused to testify.
Mr Mangold detailed Gwent Police’s involvement. “Far from discovering how Meighan’s crucial first confession was “lost”, Gwent seems to have spent much of its time reviewing the original investigation, conducted by Avon and Somerset police – even though no claim of a cover-up was made against that force.
“Gwent’s inquiry involved eight detectives and lasted a year. But just eight witnesses were interviewed in that time. Seven were members of the public, including me, Norman Scott and Dominic Carman, son of the late barrister George Carman, who had defended Thorpe. Dominic was the only person Gwent could find who had most of the trial papers.
“Gwent failed to find the original confession made by Meighan or to learn who the men were who interviewed him in his kitchen. Nor has it found his second statement, the one guaranteed to silence him and drop all mention of Thorpe and the Ritz café conspirators. That, too, appears to have vanished.
“No officers of the Metropolitan police, Special Branch or security services were interviewed by Gwent. Nevertheless, the Welsh force has insisted it does not believe Scotland Yard, Special Branch or the security services were involved in any coverup.
“Just as bafflingly, Gwent also admitted it did not bother to investigate why Meighan was not called as prosecution witness in the 1979 trial. This, it claimed, is “because it did not form part of the review that we were requested to carry out”.
In fact, Gwent’s brief was to do exactly that: “to confirm or disprove any criminality, corruption, misconduct or undue interference with the [Thorpe conspiracy to murder] investigation,” he told The Sunday Times.
Mr Mangold said that the reopening of the investigation “merely caps off an utterly ineffective inquiry”.
While pointing the finger at MI5, he says “we still do not know who wielded the power and authority to weigh the scales of justice in Thorpe’s favour.
“But one truth is undeniable: after the narrow and botched investigation by Gwent police, questions about the official handling of the affair remain very much alive.”