Thorpe's transformation from party savior to albatross began in 1976, when he resigned as leader following charges that he had carried on a homosexual relationship with a male model named Norman Scott. Rumors of Thorpe's alleged affair had been circulating for years before Scott himself related the story in court to invited newsmen after he was mysteriously attacked on a lonely Devonshire moor. Andrew Newton, an airline pilot, was convicted of endangering life with a firearm. He claimed at first that Scott had been blackmailing him but told reporters after his release from jail that he had been hired to kill Scott by one of Thorpe's Liberal colleagues. Newton, however, said he panicked when he tried to go through with the murder and managed to shoot Scott's Great Dane instead. A few weeks before the recent party conference, Thorpe was indicted, along with three other men, for conspiracy to murder his alleged ex-lover.
The following day Peter Bessell, an old crony of Jeremy's and an ex-Liberal MP, said he had paid off Scott to be quiet about his relationship with Thorpe. "There has been a 10-year cover-up," said Bessell, who is expected to be the prosecution's star witness at the trial that may begin this week. "Jeremy Thorpe had a long-standing homosexual relationship with Norman Scott until 1965. Thorpe began talking about 'getting rid' of Scott because he feared for his political career. He would say things like, 'I wish he would fall under a truck.' "
Scott, the divorced father of two, says he met Thorpe in 1961 through a mutual friend. Several months later, he claims, Thorpe invited him to spend the night at his mother's country home in Surrey. "Jeremy was going off to Malta to make a television film," says Scott, "and he gave the impression to the other guests that I was part of the crew." After that, Scott continues, he saw Thorpe regularly and often had tea with him at the House of Commons. Thorpe admits befriending Scott but denies they were lovers. "He was down on his luck, and I felt genuinely sorry for him," Thorpe told a press conference last year. "He seemed to me in an hysterical state and on the verge of suicide. He's not the first or only person I've tried to help, but a close and even affectionate relationship developed from this sympathy. However, no sexual activity of any kind ever took place."
For Thorpe, 49, who could face 10 years in prison, conviction would mark the end of a meteoric political career. The son of an MP and godson of Lloyd George's daughter, he survived a childhood bout with tuberculosis to become the dapper president of the Oxford Union. Endowed with charm and burning ambition, he was elected to the House of Commons at 30 and became head of his party only eight years later, in 1967. Personal tragedy struck in 1970, when his first wife and mother of his son, Rupert, now 9, was killed in an automobile accident. Thorpe was remarried in 1973 to the Countess of Harewood, the ex-wife of the Queen's cousin. Throughout this latest ordeal she has stood by him, even as he campaigned for reelection to Parliament. Norman Scott, meanwhile, is living on a small farm in Devonshire and charging $150 per interview. He insists that he abhors the publicity. "When I heard that Mr. Thorpe had been called to the police station, I wasn't gloating," he has said. "The whole affair has been most upsetting."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
