The UK Politician Who (Almost) Got Away With Murder

It’s a wet and gloomy October evening in 1975. On the outskirts of Exmoor, fog has fallen. A battered, blue Ford Cortina weaves along the deserted road. Its driver seems to be looking for something.

Behind the wheel is a man named Andrew Newton. By his side is Norman Scott, a former riding instructor and model. Scott is a volatile character with a troubled history. He’s made friends in high places, but he’s also made important enemies.

Norman Scott doesn’t know it yet, but he could be sitting at the heart of a murder plot years in the making. A web spun by one of Britain’s most promising politicians.

But tonight, things aren’t quite working out as they should. By the time the pair leave the moor, Scott will still be alive. And that wasn’t the plan – if there ever was one – at all.

This is the crazy tale of Jeremy Thorpe, the politician who may have arranged a murder – and the people who helped him do it. Allegedly.

Paranoia

You’ll notice I’m choosing my words carefully here. And that’s because – spoiler alert – the subject of today’s story, Jeremy Thorpe, was acquitted of the charges we’ll be talking about.

Despite this, the fact that he did, allegedly, “get away with” attempted murder actually makes today’s story all the more compelling. It makes us wonder, if he was guilty, how he managed to walk free. We’ll talk about establishment cover-up conspiracies and delve into some key accounts of what happened. But of course, according to the British justice system, Thorpe was an innocent man. As ever, the court of public opinion was another matter entirely.

Because, by the end of 1979, Thorpe’s reputation and career would both lie in tatters. So, before we get to that sad end, let’s go back a few years to meet him as he once was: the archetypal British gentleman.

John Jeremy Thorpe came from a political bloodline: his father and grandfather had both served as Conservative Party MPs. Thorpe himself had a privileged childhood, and studied at the elite Eton College boarding school. Later, he read Law at Trinity College, Oxford, where he became chair of the Oxford Union. Known for wearing Edwardian-style clothes and carrying a silver-topped cane, he was a distinctive figure around campus. After graduating, he trained as a barrister before following his family into politics.

Hugh Grant, who’d later play him in the BBC drama A Very English Scandal, has described him as a man “who epitomised the establishment”. He was smart, witty; an accomplished speaker. He knew the “right” people, and liked to make connections. But in his own small way, he rebelled against his upbringing. Shunning his Conservative background, he became a candidate for the Liberal party. He didn’t only win a seat – in the space of a decade, he won the whole party, becoming Liberal leader in 1967.

Following his success, The Guardian newspaper described Thorpe as having a great zest for public life. “However else the Thorpe leadership turns out,” the paper concluded, “it’s bound to be fun”.

In many ways, this was spot-on. His sense of humour and natural ease made him popular with his followers. He campaigned passionately on issues he believed in, like post-colonial human rights. But Jeremy Thorpe had a secret: one that could blow his world apart in a heartbeat.

Throughout his campaigning of the 1950s and 60s, Thorpe had carried on secret relationships with other men. At this time, homosexuality was a crime, punishable by up to two years in prison. Thorpe had ambitions to one day become Prime Minister. Being outed as gay would end his career, but it could also brand him a criminal. It’s no wonder he chose to keep it quiet.

Within politics, as elsewhere, the attitudes of many people towards gay men were starkly rigid. Thorpe would already have seen political figures like the Labour MP Bill Field and the Foreign Office minister Ian Harvey lose their jobs for being gay. The Conservative Peer Lord Montagu, who was tried twice for gross indecency and imprisoned for 12 months, described the 1950s as a time of shame and secrecy.

“People can’t understand it now,” he later said. “They can’t imagine the furtiveness. As someone said at the time, the skies over Chelsea were black with people burning their love letters.” The Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, pledged to “rid England of this plague”. Undercover police officers set out to trap so-called offenders by posing as gay men soliciting in public places. As the law relentlessly doubled down, as many as 1,000 men were sent to prison every year.

This was the world in which Jeremy Thorpe first met Norman Scott.

Their introduction has echoes of a Jilly Cooper novel. Thirty-year-old Thorpe was the distinguished, affluent politician, while Scott – who was then known as Norman Josiffe – was eleven years his junior and working at a stables in Chipping Norton. It was there, in 1961, while Thorpe was visiting his friend, Brecht Van de Vater, that the two met. And initially, this was all that happened. After a brief conversation, Thorpe gave Scott his business card and told him to get in touch if he ever needed him.

Months later, in the wake of a nervous breakdown, Scott was discharged from a psychiatric clinic. He had no home, no money, and nowhere to go. He recalled Thorpe’s offer of help. And so, he gathered up his possessions – including some letters, and his dog, Mrs Tish – and caught a train to London.

His destination was the House of Commons, where he was relieved to find that not only did Thorpe remember him, but that he’d even offer to put him up for the night at his mother’s house. At Thorpe’s suggestion, Scott introduced himself as a cameraman who’d be accompanying him on a business trip to Malta the next day. According to Scott, their sexual relationship began that night and continued for “several years”, though Thorpe always denied this.

All the same, there began to be whisperings about Thorpe’s behaviour. In 1959, he was reportedly considered as a possible best man at the wedding of his friend, Anthony Armstrong-Jones, and Princess Margaret. This idea was quashed when discreet vetting checks carried out by MI5 noted that he “might have homosexual tendencies”.

However much Thorpe would admit to – whether it was friendship or something more – it’s clear that he and Scott were close. He helped him find accommodation and equestrian work, and even investigated whether Scott was due money following an air crash that he said had killed his father. In the end, though, Scott’s father, Albert, was found to be still alive, and living in Orpington.

Scott, in turn, visited the House of Commons in a bid to impress Thorpe by hearing him speak. He saw notables like Sir Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. He mingled with Thorpe’s friends, attended exclusive clubs, and ordered clothes from the same West End outfitter’s, which were charged to Thorpe’s account. According to Scott, they bonded over the knowledge that their relationship carried such high risks for both of them.

Troubled Times

By late 1962, though, things were becoming difficult. Scott’s behaviour could be erratic, and as the relationship began to break down, he clearly felt a sense of grievance against the older man. He’d later admit openly that at the time, he’d considered murdering his lover. “I found a bullet,” he said, “but had no gun to fire it with.” He confided in a friend that he wanted to shoot Thorpe, and then commit suicide. Concerned, she called the police.

On the 19th of December 1962, the now-22-year-old Norman Scott walked into Chelsea Police Station to make a complaint against Jeremy Thorpe. He told police that he wanted to come clean about his “homosexual relations” with the MP. In the course of a six-page statement, he outlined how these relations had developed. He stated that he’d tried to end the affair, but that Thorpe had refused to let him go.

When he threatened to report him, Thorpe had apparently said that he couldn’t be hurt, because “he was a friend of the Director of Public Prosecutions.” Scott produced a letter as evidence of their relationship, saying that he also had more.

Things had clearly soured, but others would argue it was Thorpe who’d taken a step back from Scott, which also meant withdrawing his financial support and protection. After leaving his job back at the stables, Scott had been left without a National Insurance card, which he needed to find another job. It sounds like a minor point, but his argument that Thorpe was withholding this card became an ongoing bone of contention.

Scott’s statement was taken down in the presence of Detective-Inspector Robert Huntley, who’d go on to become Commander at Scotland Yard. When he was later asked about it by the investigative journalist Barrie Penrose, Huntley laughed, saying “There were a lot of queer things going on in Chelsea […] You never quite knew what to believe.”

Whether he believed Norman Scott or not, at this point we can begin seeing how Jeremy Thorpe’s privileged status began protecting him from potential fallout. It was a level of support and involvement that would only grow as time went on.

For now, the complaint was largely brushed off. Jeremy Thorpe wasn’t questioned. The file on him was passed up and up, until finally being locked away at Scotland Yard, in a safe held by the Assistant Commissioner of Crime. Ranulph Bacon, who carried out the 1959 “check” on Thorpe, described it as a safe for “things that were going to create a public scandal, or might create a public scandal.” It held files of which “the fewer people who knew, the better.” 1963 was, after all, the year of the scandal, with news breaking about the Profumo affair, Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five, and the Vassall affair, in which a homosexual honeytrap was used to blackmail a clerical officer within the Admiralty. The last thing Britain’s leaders needed was another political scandal.

That year, 1963, Scott travelled to Northern Ireland to take up a job at a riding school. But, despite Thorpe’s assurances that he would send it, his National Insurance card never arrived. He lost one job and moved into another, before suffering a riding accident that saw him travelling back, once more, to England. According to Scott, he continued seeing Thorpe while he was there, with Thorpe even writing him a letter that contained the words “I love you”.

For the next two years, Norman Scott’s fortunes seemed to falter. He gained and lost several jobs, and suffered from severe depressive episodes. During a disastrous career move to Switzerland, he left his suitcase – containing many of Thorpe’s letters – on a train. His new employer lent the unhappy Scott 300 francs to move back home, but said he would keep the suitcase, when it turned up, as collateral until the money was repaid.

Hearing of this, Thorpe was horrified. Desperate to retrieve the letters, he contacted the British Consulate and Foreign Office. Scott moved, once again, to Ireland, where he had two failed jobs and eventually went to stay in a Trappist monastery. He seemed to be unravelling.

One of his past employers wrote to Thorpe, whom she believed to be his guardian, describing him as “a charming boy”, but one who “can turn very nasty”. In Thorpe’s reply, on Commons-headed notepaper, he hastily put distance between himself and Scott, denying that he was his guardian.

For Thorpe, Scott was becoming a liability. And the situation was only going to get worse.

Bad Penny

In March 1965, Thorpe rang his fellow Liberal MP, Peter Bessell, to invite him to lunch at the Ritz. Bessell noticed that Thorpe sounded “tense”. Over lunch, he discovered why. Thorpe produced a letter, addressed to his mother, Ursula. It had been sent by Norman Scott, and it made damning reading. Over 17 pages, Scott told Thorpe’s mother that the pair had been in a homosexual relationship “for the last five years”. He detailed how Thorpe had let him down, and asked if she’d be kind enough to lend him £30. He still wanted to pay for his suitcase to be returned from abroad. Thorpe didn’t think his mother actually believed the claims, but Scott’s willingness to talk was worrying.

At the Ritz, Peter Bessell was flattered that Thorpe had chosen him as a confidant. And so, he offered to travel to Dublin to speak to Scott. It would be the first of many favours. In fact, Bessell became a sort of “go-between” or “fixer” in the tricky dynamic between the two men. On this occasion, he gave Scott £5 and came away feeling confident he’d put an end to any trouble for the time being. In gratitude, Thorpe gave Bessell a gold cigarette lighter.

And there was more good news. Scott’s suitcase had been located, and sent on to the British Consulate in Zurich. From there, Bessell had it shipped back to the UK, and sent on to the Victoria Station left luggage section, where Thorpe collected it. Before sending it on to Scott in Ireland, though, Thorpe forced it open and retrieved those dangerous letters. He thought, finally, that he might be in the clear. If only it were that simple.

Not long after, Thorpe was warned – wrongly – that Barnstaple Police were apparently investigating his affair with Scott. In truth, the case had been dropped, to all intents and purposes, back in 1962. But this conversation did bring one fact home to Thorpe: that during his original visit to the police, Scott had given them letters. The evidence he thought he’d contained had only been part of it. As ever, he turned to Peter Bessell for advice.

At this point, Bessell decided it was time to widen their circle. Without spreading knowledge of Thorpe’s sexuality too far, he began to recruit other well-connected people who might be able to help. These included George Thomas, a friend and Labour MP; the lawyer Baron Goodman; and the Home Secretary, Frank Soskice. Soskice was sympathetic, but firm in his advice. He told Bessell to “keep Jeremy away from the creature. Treat him rough. If he makes any demands on Jeremy, get rid of him – tell him to go to hell!” Their separation had to be absolute if the risk of exposure was going to be kept at bay.

But damage limitation wasn’t easy. For one thing, Jeremy Thorpe wasn’t being as discreet as others might like. His failed seduction of a man while travelling had rebounded on him. The man in question had reported his experience to North Devon’s Liberal and Conservative associations, leading to Thorpe being heckled relentlessly. Alongside this, Norman Scott was still speaking to all and sundry, causing rumours to swirl around political circles.

Yet despite all this, Thorpe’s public life and career continued to flourish. With his appointment as Liberal leader in 1967, he became the youngest man to lead a political party in Britain in over a century. With this taste of success, he knew he wanted more. And, if his rumoured sexuality put his career at risk, it was a problem he could solve – or at least appear to. Although homosexuality had now been decriminalised, the stigma remained. In 1968, he married Caroline Allpass at Lambeth Palace.

But always, in the background, there was Norman Scott. His fondness for talking, and the fear that he may still have letters, were a constant threat to Thorpe’s new, clean image. Whenever Scott fell on hard times, he wrote to Peter Bessell, asking for money. Through Bessell, Thorpe paid Scott a regular “retainer” to compensate for issues with his National Insurance. When Scott wanted to relaunch a modelling career, Bessell gave him £75 to get started. He hoped this would be enough to finally set Scott on his own path. It wasn’t.

At Thorpe’s private room in the House of Commons, Bessell was forced to deliver unpleasant news. Scott’s modelling career had failed. In his book, A Very English Scandal, which was later made into a TV series, John Preston describes how Bessell, despite trying to reassure his friend, had never seen Thorpe so low. “He did what he could to buoy him up, saying that he was confident he could keep Scott under control and stop him from doing anything rash.”

Thorpe was unconvinced. What followed would be one of the most significant conversations in the case. According to Bessell, when the pair met again, Thorpe said, “Peter, we’ve got to get rid of him.” “What, are you thinking of killing him off?” Bessell asked. “Yes,” Thorpe said. “He would have to be shot […] it’s no worse than shooting a sick dog.”

By Bessell’s account, he was shaken by the suggestion, but chose to “play for time” by continuing to talk. He described listening to Thorpe throw around ideas of how it might be done. They debated people they knew who might carry out the killing. Thorpe apparently favoured a mutual friend called David Holmes, who was the Liberal Party’s assistant treasurer.

He’d already been co-opted into a slightly ridiculous plot to pose as a journalist in order to get his hands on Norman Scott’s letters. Bessell, however, thought Holmes “too wet” for murder.

Despite this, January 1969 allegedly saw the three men – Thorpe, Bessell and Holmes – gathering to discuss how they might go about it. It would be the first conversation of many. But still, the show went on. When Thorpe’s newborn son, Rupert, was christened that summer at Canterbury Cathedral, David Holmes was one of his godfathers.

Dog in a Fog

As coincidence would have it, Jeremy Thorpe wasn’t the only one to step into marriage and fatherhood. Norman Scott had got married, too, to his pregnant girlfriend, Sue Myers. Although Myers had initially favoured the idea of an abortion, Scott had talked her round. As a Roman Catholic, he believed a termination was wrong. And so, he’d proposed. On the 13th of May 1969, the couple married at Kensington Register Office.

Their “honeymoon period” was woefully short. Before long, the newlyweds had run out of money, and Sue discovered that she wouldn’t be able to claim maternity benefits without Scott’s National Insurance card. Scott wrote – again – to Peter Bessell. When he was unable to help, a frantic Scott called Thorpe’s home in North Devon, blurting out the whole story to his confused wife, Caroline. “I don’t want to know anything about it,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

The birth of his son, Benjamin, did little to improve Scott’s outlook. His relationship with Sue broke down, culminating in her returning, with the baby, to be with her parents in Lincolnshire.

As the Scotts’ divorce proceedings began, Thorpe faced a loss of his own. His wife, Caroline, was tragically killed when her car veered into an oncoming lane, colliding with a 13-ton lorry and another car. It’s not clear exactly why the accident happened, which has sparked waves of speculation ever since. In A Very English Scandal, John Preston outlines a theory that Norman Scott visited the Thorpe home just before Caroline set out on her journey. “What does seem clear”, he argues, “is that, mired in grief […] Thorpe came to believe that Scott bore some responsibility for his wife’s death.”

In an attempt to “neutralise” Scott, Bessell wrote to him, inviting him to visit his office. There, he assured the younger man that he’d arrange to pay the rent on a new home in North Wales, advance him money to open a riding school, and even put him in touch with a solicitor to help with his divorce. Perhaps he hoped that this would be enough to make Scott go away. Perhaps it was a case of “out of sight, out of mind,” exacerbated by the fact that Bessell himself was deep in debt.

Either way, after an initial trickle of money, Scott received no further cheques from Bessell. He was broke. On his behalf, a friend wrote to Thorpe, whose personal assistant replied, stating that he was “under no obligation to this gentleman.”

In retaliation, Scott, and his friend, a village postmistress named Gwen Parry-Jones, travelled to London and told his story to the Liberal Chief Whip, David Steel. Steel was dubious about Scott, who seemed to be in “a highly emotional state”. But he chose to hear him out, and was shocked to see letters that seemed to prove the tale. Scott later described how “the blood literally drained from his face.”

The party held an internal inquiry, and somehow, Thorpe scraped through. It was decided that Scott’s claims just couldn’t be proven. To officials, his story seemed more like a vendetta.

It had been ten years since Thorpe and Scott first met, but their connection was proving impossible to break. In 1973, Thorpe married again, to the Countess of Harewood, Marion Stein. With the 1974 General Election, the Liberals achieved their strongest post-war results. But still, some say, Thorpe didn’t feel safe.

By this time, Peter Bessell had moved to America, leaving his close friend David Holmes to take over as “fixer”. This role – allegedly – saw Holmes finally putting years of vague planning into action. From here, we’re forced to stray into the hypothetical. If this murder plot did happen, here’s how it may have played out.

An often-reported story is that Holmes approached a carpet salesman named John Le Mesurier. If you’ve ever watched Dad’s Army, he wasn’t that John Le Mesurier, though – just someone with the same name. Through him, Holmes met a slot machine salesman, George Deakin, who might be able to help with the kind of “contacts” you’d need to make someone disappear.

In February 1975, the story goes, Deakin recruited Andrew Newton, a 29-year-old pilot, to kill Scott for a sizeable sum: between five and ten-thousand pounds. Thorpe reportedly raised this money from a wealthy Liberal benefactor, Sir Jack Hayward, under the cover of “election expenses”.

The stage was set for Newton to act. On the 12th of October, 1975, he drove to Barnstaple, where he approached Scott, introducing himself with the alias “Peter Keene”. He told Scott he’d been hired to protect him from a hitman flying in from Canada, and that he’d be in touch again when the man arrived. Scott thought it seemed possible, but asked a friend to jot down the registration of “Peter Keene’s” car, just in case.

The call came just under two weeks later. Despite accidentally referring to himself as “Andy”, rather than Peter, Newton was able to convince Scott that the hitman hadn’t only arrived in the country – he’d arrived in Devon. He told Scott to meet him at a local hotel at six o’clock the following evening. There, he picked him up, annoyed that Scott had also brought along his Great Dane dog, Rinka. With some effort, they got Rinka through the driver’s door and onto the back seat of Newton’s Ford Cortina.

Together, they drove to Porlock, and after a stop off, continued on towards the wilds of Exmoor. Scott noticed that through the fog and rain, Newton seemed to be weaving the car back and forth, looking for something. Finally, he pulled over – ostensibly so that Scott could take over the driving. But, to Scott’s surprise, “Peter Keene” followed him out of the car, along with an excited Rinka.

Scott was confused, but not for long. “Peter’s” intentions quickly became clear, as he fired one shot into Rinka before telling Scott, “It’s your turn now.” The thing he’d been looking for would turn out to be a box, conveniently marking a pre-selected burial spot.

Instinctively, Scott darted away and ran out onto the moor. But, realising that he was backlit by the distant lights of Cardiff, he gave up. He was too easy a target. Instead, he turned to head back towards the car, resolved that if he had to die, he’d rather do it by Rinka’s side.

But for Newton, AKA Keene, the execution hit a snag. The gun in his hand jammed. Unable to make the final shot, Newton jumped in his car and fled. Minutes later, a car driven by an off-duty AA patrolman found Scott, sobbing and covered in his beloved dog’s blood. “To this day,” Scott later said, “I can’t watch a gun go off in a TV show, all these years later.”

A shaken Scott recounted his story at Minehead Police Station, saying “It’s all the fault of that bloody man Thorpe”. It didn’t get the reception he might have expected. According to Scott, incredulous police officers banged his head against a wall, denied him his medication, and chalked his wild tale up to the “hysterical fantasising” of a homosexual.

While parts of Scott’s story raised sceptical eyebrows, other elements were undeniable. Rinka had been shot. In October 1975, the West Somerset Free Press “broke” the story, running the headline: ‘The Great Dane Death Mystery: Dog-in-a-Fog Case Baffles Police’. The accompanying article described how Bridgewater police “refused to confirm or deny a story that has gained circulation – that the killer of the pet also tried to shoot the man, but that the gun jammed. Neither would say whether the dog owner is a Mr Norman Scott of Park Lane, Combe Martin.”

But even this part of the story veers into something like farce. When the Free Press contacted Jeremy Thorpe’s agent for a comment before publishing, their phone call was returned by a man with a fake Scottish accent. Through this bizarre veil, the paper’s editor, Jack Hurley, recognised Thorpe’s voice. He challenged him, and Thorpe admitted he was the speaker, before doing his best to stall the story. As we’ve heard, they ran it anyway. By December, the satirical magazine Private Eye had also published a story, linking Thorpe to Rinka’s shooting. A major scandal was about to unfold.

Speaking to the Mirror newspaper in 2018, Norman Scott claimed that there were actually five different attempts to kill him. These range from the bizarre to the downright implausible, from attacking him with a chisel concealed in flowers, to dropping him from a helicopter over the Florida Everglades. He said: “It sounds like the ramblings of a lunatic but it was all absolutely true.”

Unravelling

Before long, police were able to trace the car numberplate Scott’s friend had jotted down back to Andrew Newton. He was arrested and charged with the possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. He denied that he’d planned to kill, saying only that he wanted to frighten Scott. Granted bail, he retreated to await trial.

Norman Scott was in legal trouble of his own, though not to the same extent. In January 1976, just three months after his attempted murder, he appeared in a Barnstaple courtroom on a minor charge relating to social security benefits. While there, he declared, “I am being hounded all the time just because of my sexual relationship with Jeremy Thorpe.” Because it had been said in court, this claim could be freely reported in newspapers. It was the beginning of the end for Thorpe’s career.

He issued a denial, but details were filtering through to the press. Elsewhere, the shooting incident was again explained away with talk of Scott having blackmailed Newton. In March, Andrew Newton went on trial, and was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. On the 10th of May, amid heavy press coverage, Jeremy Thorpe resigned as leader of the Liberal Party.

In a letter to the Chief Whip, David Steel, he wrote: “No man can effectively lead a party if the greater part of his time has to be devoted to answering allegations as they arise and countering plots and intrigues.” His dreams of becoming Prime Minister were in tatters.

But his reputation could still – for now – be protected. Angered at what he considered Thorpe’s unfair treatment by the press, Prime Minister Harold Wilson approached news outlets, attempting to deflect them onto a different story. One of the people he spoke to was Sir Charles Curran, Director-General of the BBC. Curran happily agreed that Thorpe’s was “a dead political story”, and dropped it.

It was all to no avail. Peter Bessell, in an apparent attack of conscience, chose to start giving interviews. After all, he argued, this was no longer a case of “covering up Jeremy’s private life”, but an attempted murder. To compound the issue, when Newton was released from prison in April 1977, he found a lucrative offer awaiting him. The Evening News would pay for his story – his real story. Newton was happy to oblige.

And so it was that the entire affair unravelled, once and for all. Newton publicly claimed he’d been paid to kill Scott by Thorpe and his friends. The headline read, “I Was Hired to Kill Scott”. At a press conference, Thorpe denied everything, but the case could no longer be brushed under the carpet. The police were forced to investigate, and on the 4th of August 1978, Jeremy Thorpe was arrested for conspiracy to murder. So, too, were his “co-conspirators” David Holmes, John Le Mesurier, and George Deakin.

The four defendants were charged, and committed for trial at the Old Bailey, with proceedings beginning on the 8th of May 1979. Peter Bessell was deployed as the chief prosecution witness, although he came over badly during the trial. The prosecution spent 20 days presenting its case. The defence took just one. Thorpe himself didn’t take the stand – a decision that raised some eyebrows. But it was deemed safer for him to stay quiet.

The defence’s case had been lightly put, but their confidence was high. This confidence was borne out when the judge, Sir Joseph Cantley, heavily criticised all of the witnesses in his summing up, while being particularly vicious about Norman Scott. He described Scott as “a hysterical, warped personality… He is a crook. He is a fraud. He is a sponger. He is a whiner. He is a parasite.” He was, the judge said, a “spineless neurotic”.

After deliberating for 52 hours, the jury delivered its verdict: “Thorpe and Co.” were not guilty.

But, although Thorpe was legally innocent, the public jury was still out. After his acquittal, he was offered the role of Director-General of the British section of Amnesty International, but members objected. The appointment fell through. In a rare interview in 2009, Thorpe described it as a “sad business”. After living the rest of his life in relative privacy, he died in 2014 from Parkinson’s Disease. It was a very different future to the one he’d once hoped for.

To this day, talk of a cover-up persists. In 2015, not long after Thorpe’s death, police in Gwent launched a fresh investigation of the crime. Two years later, they closed it again; wrongly believing that Andrew Newton had died. Red-faced officers were later forced to admit that he was actually alive and well, but living under a new name in Surrey. He’d been tracked down by the Mail on Sunday. Norman Scott, then aged 78, labelled the mistake as evidence of “continuing the cover up”. After Newton was found and interviewed, apparently with no new information to offer, the case was once again mothballed.

Journalist Tom Mangold interviewed Scott for a special episode of Panorama in 1979. “We believed a guilty verdict against Thorpe was a certainty”, Mangold said. With his acquittal, the programme was dropped; the original locked away at the BBC and other copies ordered to be destroyed. It would finally be aired almost 40 years later, in 2018, to coincide with the TV dramatisation starring Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe.

Mangold remained convinced the affair was a cover-up, stretching from the police and Scotland Yard to MI5. It’s no surprise that Norman Scott agreed. In 2018, he criticised the failed reinvestigation, saying, “Even now the establishment are still trying to look after their own. […] I still dream of justice. I would love it if somehow it’s proved in a court of law that I was telling the truth.”

Conclusion

And that’s it. It’s a story described by Tatler magazine as “A torrid tale of lust, lies and encouragements to kill”. Over time, some people admitted to their involvement. News stories were squashed. Letters were intercepted. Investigations were dropped. ITN editor Nigel Ryan reportedly said, while blocking a piece, that “he’d known Thorpe a long time, and didn’t think Scott’s story was at all credible.”

And in many ways, he was right. Parts of the case were incredible. If what people like Scott, Newton and Bessell said was true, the Thorpe affair occasionally reads more like an amateurish boys’ adventure than a serious murder plot. Nevertheless, this fantastical and slightly farcical tale shook politics to its core.

The affair implicated huge numbers of friends, associates, and connections. It became caught up in endless questions of who knew, who didn’t, and who helped to keep it that way. But at its heart, it all rested on the relationship between two men: Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott. In his beleaguered Panorama episode, journalist Tom Mangold described their dynamic as, “a struggle in which only one man could win, and one must lose.” Ultimately, it’s hard to know whether anyone “won” at all.

Key Takeaways

• Jeremy Thorpe, Liberal Party leader from 1967, was acquitted of conspiracy to murder his former lover Norman Scott in 1979.
• Thorpe’s secret homosexual relationships posed severe career risks when homosexuality remained criminal and socially stigmatized.
• Andrew Newton shot Scott’s Great Dane Rinka on Exmoor in 1975, but the gun jammed before he could kill Scott.
• The judge’s harsh summing-up against Scott and prosecution witnesses helped secure Thorpe’s acquittal despite damaging testimony.
• Allegations of establishment cover-up persist, involving suppressed police files, media interference, and a botched 2015 reinvestigation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Jeremy Thorpe and what was his political background?

Jeremy Thorpe was a British Liberal Party politician who came from a political bloodline—his father and grandfather had both served as Conservative Party MPs. He studied at Eton College and later read Law at Trinity College, Oxford, where he became chair of the Oxford Union. After training as a barrister, he shunned his Conservative background and became a Liberal candidate, eventually becoming Liberal leader in 1967—the youngest man to lead a political party in Britain in over a century.

How did Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott first meet?

They met in 1961 at a stables in Chipping Norton, where Scott (then known as Norman Josiffe) was working. Thorpe was visiting his friend Brecht Van de Vater. After a brief conversation, Thorpe gave Scott his business card and told him to get in touch if he ever needed him.

What happened on October 12, 1975, involving Norman Scott and Andrew Newton?

Andrew Newton, using the alias ‘Peter Keene,’ approached Scott in Barnstaple and told him he’d been hired to protect him from a hitman. About two weeks later, Newton picked Scott up at a hotel and drove him to Exmoor. After pulling over, Newton shot Scott’s Great Dane dog Rinka, then told Scott ‘It’s your turn now.’ However, the gun jammed, and Newton fled. Scott was later found sobbing and covered in his dog’s blood by an off-duty AA patrolman.

What was the outcome of Jeremy Thorpe’s trial for conspiracy to murder?

Jeremy Thorpe was tried at the Old Bailey beginning May 8, 1979, along with co-conspirators David Holmes, John Le Mesurier, and George Deakin. After the prosecution spent 20 days presenting its case and the defense took just one day, the jury deliberated for 52 hours and delivered a verdict of not guilty. Thorpe did not take the stand during the trial.

How did the judge describe Norman Scott during the trial summing up?

Judge Sir Joseph Cantley heavily criticized Norman Scott, describing him as ‘a hysterical, warped personality… He is a crook. He is a fraud. He is a sponger. He is a whiner. He is a parasite.’ He also called Scott a ‘spineless neurotic.‘

What role did Peter Bessell play in the Thorpe-Scott affair?

Peter Bessell, a fellow Liberal MP, became a ‘go-between’ or ‘fixer’ between Thorpe and Scott. He traveled to Dublin to speak with Scott, retrieved Scott’s suitcase containing Thorpe’s letters from Zurich, paid Scott a regular ‘retainer,’ and helped recruit well-connected people to assist Thorpe. Bessell later became the chief prosecution witness at Thorpe’s trial, though he came over badly during proceedings.

What happened to Jeremy Thorpe’s political career after the scandal?

On May 10, 1976, amid heavy press coverage, Jeremy Thorpe resigned as leader of the Liberal Party, stating that ‘No man can effectively lead a party if the greater part of his time has to be devoted to answering allegations as they arise and countering plots and intrigues.’ After his 1979 acquittal, he was offered the role of Director-General of the British section of Amnesty International, but members objected and the appointment fell through. He lived the rest of his life in relative privacy and died in 2014 from Parkinson’s Disease.

What evidence of establishment cover-up does the article mention?

The article mentions several elements suggesting cover-up: Scott’s 1962 police complaint was passed up and locked away in a safe for ‘things that were going to create a public scandal’; Prime Minister Harold Wilson approached news outlets to deflect coverage; BBC Director-General Sir Charles Curran agreed Thorpe’s was ‘a dead political story’ and dropped it; a Panorama program about the case was locked away and copies ordered destroyed; and police in 2017 wrongly believed Andrew Newton had died and closed a fresh investigation, which Norman Scott called evidence of ‘continuing the cover up.‘

What did Andrew Newton claim after his release from prison in 1977?

After being released from prison in April 1977, Andrew Newton sold his story to the Evening News. He publicly claimed he had been paid to kill Scott by Thorpe and his friends, with the headline ‘I Was Hired to Kill Scott.‘

How did Jeremy Thorpe allegedly fund the murder plot?

According to the article, Thorpe reportedly raised between five and ten thousand pounds from a wealthy Liberal benefactor, Sir Jack Hayward, under the cover of ‘election expenses.’ This money was allegedly used to pay Andrew Newton to kill Norman Scott.

Sources

• Original Scandal video: The UK Politician Who (Almost) Got Away With Murder
• Hero image source by William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland / openverse, by-sa.

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