Officers call on ‘dead man’ at home after discovery that he is still alive

inquiries in 2016 in a case called Operation Velum but closed it last year saying they could take it no further.

Now they say: “We have revisited these inquiries and have identified information which indicates that Mr Newton may still be alive.

“As a result, further inquiries will be conducted to trace Mr Newton to assess if he is able to assist the investigation.”

They added they had “lines of inquiry open” but would not provide further comment “at this time”.

Senior CPS prosecutor Nicola Rees had told Scott in a letter in February last year: “Various key witnesses are now deceased, including Andrew Newton.”

But in reality Newton, a pilot, had changed his name to Hann Redwin and was splitting his time between living in Dorking with his girlfriend and living at a property in London. There was no sign of Newton yesterday at the home he shared with girlfriend Patsy Frankham.

She left at 9am in a blue Toyota, returning alone at 4.45pm. She refused to speak. Neighbours say Newton has been coming and going for a year or two.

A neighbour said of Patsy: “She’s the sweetest, loveliest person or neighbour you could ask for. No one would have a bad word to say against her.

“She worked as a nurse at the GP surgery for years and everyone there loved her and didn’t want her to leave.

“She retired about a year ago and he’s been coming and going for maybe a year or two.”

Newton, who is refusing to discuss the events from the 70s, told Thorpe’s 1979 Old Bailey trial that he had been paid to kill Scott.

He admitted killing Rinka and was planning to shoot Scott but the gun jammed.

Scott recently invited our sister paper the Daily Mirror to his home on Dartmoor.

He said: “People do get fed-up with everything being re-hashed but hopefully the younger generation will see what really happened and that there was an establishment cover-up back then.

“Even now the establishment are still trying to look after their own. I’m still very confident that truth will out.

“I still dream of justice. I’d love it if somehow it’s proved in a court of law I was telling the truth.” The chilling details of his near-death experience are still vivid for Scott. He recalled: “He shot Rinka and then he tried to shoot me. “But the gun didn’t go off. Even now I can still see him shaking the gun in front of the car headlights shouting, ‘F***, f***, f***’. “I was so upset by the shooting of Rinka that I tried to give her the kiss of life. I was covered in her blood.” The scandal destroyed the political career of Thorpe, who died aged 85 in 2014. A Very English Scandal, which starred Hugh Grant as Thorpe and was directed by Stephen Frears, concluded on BBC1 last night. Ben Whishaw