Vindication for Jeremy Thorpe

The "trial of the century "ends in his acquittal ill the foreman please stand," said an official of the court. A gray-haired woman, dressed in a blue suit, rose to her feet. "What say you?" inquired the official, reading the first charge, conspiracy to murder. "Not guilty," she replied. There was a stir in Courtroom No. 1 of London's Old Bailey that was immediately hushed by cries of "Silence!" The official continued by asking the verdict for all four defendants. Each time the reply was "Not guilty." Then the official asked for a second verdict, to the charge that one of the defendants had specifically incited another to murder a third person. Again the answer was "Not guilty." The proceedings lasted for scarcely a minute. When the presiding judge, Sir Joseph Cantley, adjourned the court, former Liberal Party Leader Jeremy Thorpe, 50, picked up the three pillows he had brought along to pad his hard wooden chair throughout the 31-day trial and exuberantly tossed them over the dock to his wife Marion.

Thus ended what the British press had dubbed "the trial of the century." The acquittal last week of Thorpe and three co-defendants ended a three-year ordeal that had cost the politician his party leadership, his seat in Parliament and one of the most promising careers in British politics. In the most bizarre sexual-political scandal since War Minister John Profumo's dalliance with Girl-About-Town Christine Keeler in 1963, Thorpe had been accused of plotting to murder Norman Scott, a former male model, because Scott's allegations of a homosexual affair between them threatened Thorpe's career.

In 1975 Scott was taken by Andrew Newton, an erstwhile airline pilot, to a lonely moor at night; Scott was not harmed, but Newton shot his Great Dane, Rinka. Newton was sentenced to two years for possession of a firearm and intent to endanger life. There the matter might have ended, except that after his release from prison Newton began talking of a "contract" to murder Scott. An investigation was launched, which led to a trial.

Also tried were David Holmes, 49, formerly deputy treasurer of the Liberal Party, whom Thorpe was charged with inciting to murder Scott; John Le Mesurier, 49, director of a carpet discount firm, charged with recruiting Newton to kill Scott and paying him off; and George Deakin, 39, a nightclub owner, who allegedly introduced Newton to Le Mesurier and Holmes. Deakin was the only one of the four defendants to take the stand. He testified that Le Mesurier and Holmes only wanted Newton to frighten, rather than kill, someone who Deakin believed was blackmailing Holmes' wife.

In his summation to the jury of "the rather bizarre and surprising case," the presiding judge described the evidence against Thorpe as "almost entirely circumstantial." He made the point that the prosecution's case relied on the testimony of witnesses whose characters were less than trustworthy. Scott, who now trains horses in Devon, gave a highly emotional performance.

At one stage he declared of his relationship with Thorpe: "By the end of 1962 I was very unhappy. I just wanted to finish the whole thing myself, Thorpe and everything. I just wanted to kill Thorpe." The judge described Scott as "a crook, a fraud, a sponger and a parasite."

Another prosecution witness was Peter Bessell, who claimed that Thorpe had confessed his homosexuality to him at a meeting in the House of Commons dining room and later said he wanted to murder Scott for blackmailing him. Bessell, the judge noted, was "a lay preacher who at the same time was sexually promiscuous and, therefore, a humbug."

As for Newton, Cantley described him as "that awful man" and a "conceited bungler" who "might have been inspired to take a little more care" if he had, in fact, been intent on murder.

"Whether it was a conspiracy to frighten or a conspiracy to kill, it was badly botched," he said. The judge also made the point that the testimony of the three principal prosecution witnesses was "tainted" by the huge sums of money that each had received for telling his story to the British press. Bessell admitted on the stand that his contract for serialization of portions of a book he is writing called for twice as much ($100,000) if Thorpe were convicted. By the judge's reckoning, Scott was paid $31,000 by newspaper and television companies, and Newton $22,000.

From the beginning, Thorpe had insisted that he was innocent both of the criminal charges and of any sexual relationship with Scott. In a written statement at the end of the trial, Thorpe called the verdict "totally fair, just and a complete vindication." Then he embraced his wife, a former concert pianist, and his mother, both of whom had attended the trial, and climbed into his old black Humber. He said he intended to take a short rest with his family, away from the glare of publicity.

Few believed that Thorpe would ever again be able to pick up the pieces of what had been a distinguished, indeed brilliant, public life.

During his 20 years in the House of Commons he had revived Britain's once great Liberal Party as a potent force in British politics. As a product of Eton and Oxford, and the husband of the former Countess of Harewood, he was an important member of that peculiarly British Institution, The Establishment, an exclusive "old boy" network that is still one of the keys to power and influence in Great Britain.

In London's fashionable West End, he dazzled Mayfair dinner parties with imitations of leading politicians that wounded with the precision of a fine steel rapier. His public manner lent a youthful zest to politics that the British public openly admired. Thorpe's fall from grace, therefore, was all the more dramatic. In surprisingly sympathetic words, the prosecuting counsel, Peter Taylor, noted: "The tragedy of this case ... is that Mr. Thorpe has been surrounded and in the end his career blighted by the Scott affair. His story is a tragedy of truly Greek or Shakespearean proportions--the slow but inevitable destruction of a man by the stamp of one defect." -

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