MAN ACQUITTED AFTER DEATH OF PIRATE RADIO CHIEF

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31196, 21 October 1966, Page 17

MAN ACQUITTED AFTER DEATH OF PIRATE RADIO CHIEF

r.V.Z Press Assn .—Copyright > CHELMSFORD (Essex), October 18. A .British business tycoon and war hero, Oliver Smedley, was today found not guilty of the manslaughter of the pirate radio chief, Reginald Calvert, in a row over Calvert's offshore radio station. Smedley was acquitted and immediately freed after the court heard statements that Calvert had threatened to use poison gas on a boarding party which put his station off the air. Calvert, aged 38, was also stated to have been carrying a loaded gas-firing pen when he was shot by Smedley, aged 55. Smedley, who admitted shooting Calvert but pleaded

1 not guilty to a manslaughter charge, was said by the prose- . cution to have been involved i in putting a boarding party - on Calvert's “radio city" stat tion last June. ' Set on a disused war-time ■ fort on a desolate sandbank • in the Thames Estuary, this ■ is one of several unlicensed “pirate” radios broadcasting I commercial pop music pro- > grammes from points around : Britain’s coasts in defiance of « wireless laws. ; Earlier, the Chelmsford i assizes was told by Smedley’s secretary, Pamela Thorburn, i that on the day before the I shooting Calvert made a i stream of threatening teleI phone calls, one of which said he would go out to the fort I and use poison gas to kill all I the people there.

She had dismissed the messages as bluff, but told Major Smedley “things were getting dangerous.” Then Calvert turned up in the early hours of the morning at Smedley’s country house, thrust his way past her and threatened to kill Smedley, she said. She tried to telephone the police, but Calvert struggled with her and hit her with the telephone headset. He also threw a big marble bust at her and swept several small bronze-busts of Napoleon on to the floor.

At the height of the struggle, Calvert saw Smedley, thrust her aside, then reeled back and fell to the floor. It was several seconds before she realised he had been shot, she added.