Allegation of second Thorpe murder plot startles Old Bailey
NZPA-Reuter London A startled Old Bailey court has heard an allegation that the former Liberal Party leader, Jeremy Thorpe, proposed not one but two murders.
Mr Thorpe, who is 50, is on trial accused of plotting what is alleged to have been a bungled attempt to kill a male model, Norman Scott. Mr Scott claims they were once homosexual lovers and, the Crown alleges, the politician wanted him silenced. Yesterday there was a dramatic and puzzling disclosure from Mr Thorpe's lawyer (Mr George Carman, Q.C.). He was cross-examining and seeking to discredit the evidence of Peter Bessell, a former Liberal member of Parliament and the star prosecution witness. He got Mr Bessell to admit to being a hypocrite and a liar, although Mr Bessell insisted he was now telling the truth.
Then he put it to Mr Bessell that he had once asserted that Mr Thorpe had in 1970 proposed another murder to him — “of a man called Hetherington.’’ Mr Bessell did not deny this.
Startled, like everyone else, the red-robed judge (Sir Joseph Cantley) leant forward and asked: “Who was this other man?”
“Hetherington, My Lord,” said the lawyer. Amid laughter, in which Mr Thorpe joined, he went on “not to be confused with the present Director of Public Prosecutions (Mr Thomas Hetherington).” More than this, however, the Thorpe defence team would not disclose, although they hinted they would enlighten the court later in the trial.
Mr Carman simply went on to get Mr Bessell to say that Mr Thorpe had proposed Mr Bessell himself as the assassin in this second murder plot. The Crown alleges that an airline pilot was hired to kill Mr Scott.
Then Mr Carman quoted the Victorian playwright, Oscar Wilde, jailed for sodomy in 1895 at the Old Bailey court where Mr Thorpe now stands trial. Mr Bessell was fond of
quoting Oscar Wilde, said the lawyer, and so would he. He quoted a character in a Wilde play who says that to lose one parent could be considered a misfortune, but to lose two sounded like carelessness.
So did two murder plots, suggested Mr Carman.
An earlier note of drama crept into the proceedings in the oak-panelled Old Bailey courtroom when Mr Thorpe’s counsel recalled
evidence by Mr Bessell about a bizarre fake murder bid which he says that he and one of Mr Thorpe’s codefendants, David Holmes, staged.
The idea was to dissuade Mr Thorpe from trying to have Mr Scott killed, by pretending to have failed in a bid to lure him to the United States to murder him there.
The lawyer said Mr Bessel! had given one account of this to the jury and quite another to two journalists who made tape recordings of what he told them while writing a book on the case. “I accept that there is muddle here,”’ said Mr Bessell. But he denied having lied. Mr Bessell then said he had made recollections at short notice to the journalists but, when he came to make a statement to the police, he had recalled the facts. He also admitted that he might have lied to the journalists about connections he
might have had in Washington, leading them to think falsely that he might have been a secret agent. Mr Bessell said he had wanted to test their gullibility after they had expressed interest in the theory that there was a South African plot to discredit Mr Thorpe and the minority Liberal Party. Mr Bessell, who has testified that he heard Mr Thorpe incite Mr Holmes to murder, denies that he sees the case as a way to make money.
He also vehemently denied a suggestion by Mr Carman that he tried to get his hands on some of the millions of pounds lodged in a London bank as the fortune of the murdered family of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Mr Bessell said that he did, in 1970. join in an attempt to discover the truth of claims that a Polish emigre known to him was a surviving descendant of the Tsar.
Mr Bessell agreed that he had been party to a request that Mr Thorpe should accuse the British and other governments in Parliament, of withholding information about the fate of the Tsar’s family, and also about the World War I sinking of the liner Lusitania and the 1937 abdication of King Edward VIIL Mr Bessell also told the court under cross-exam-ination that he had been a conscientious objector at the start of World War 11. Then he had become a tailor. Later in life he became a property dealer and member of Parliament. When his business collapsed in the early 1970 s he had lied to his creditors. Mr Bessell now lives at Oceanside, California, from where he was flown to testify at the trial in which Mr Thorpe has pleaded not guilty to incitement and conspiracy to murder, charges carrying a possible 10-year sentence.
His co-defendants, David Holmes, a former Liberal Party deputy treasurer, John Le Mesurier, a carpet trader, and George Deakin, a fruitmachine dealer, have all pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to murder.