The BBC drama about the rise and fall of the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe, A Very English Scandal, which concludes on Saturday, may need a sequel.

For the extraordinary tale of sex, power and corruption – in which Hugh Grant has been lavished with praise for his portrayal of Thorpe, who was acquitted of plotting to have his gay lover murdered – has taken another tragicomic twist.



Yesterday, police confirmed that an investigation into the murky affair will be reopened on the grounds that they had wrongly assumed one of the main suspects was dead. Easily verifiable evidence had emerged to suggest that he was indeed alive.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrew Newton in 1978 Photograph: PA

Andrew “Gino” Newton was allegedly the hitman hired to murder Thorpe’s lover, a male model called Norman Scott, on Exmoor in 1975. A pilot from Blackpool, Newton gave evidence for the prosecution of Thorpe and three others at what was described as “the trial of the century”, only to be branded by the judge as a “perjurer” who was “determined to milk the case as hard as he can”.



Newton, known as “Snaz” because of his flamboyant style of dress, claimed that he had agreed to murder Scott for between £10,000 and £20,000. After shooting dead Scott’s dog, a great dane called Rinka, he allegedly aimed the gun at Scott, only for it to jam. He was jailed for two years for killing Rinka.

Even though Thorpe was acquitted, the 1979 trial ended his career. Lurid speculation about what really happened and why dogged him for the rest of his life. Whether Newton was meant to only frighten Scott and stop him going public about his relationship with Thorpe, or indeed kill him, as he maintained, remains the stuff of conjecture. Hopes for a breakthrough came when a new inquiry was launched by Gwent police in 2015 – the year after Thorpe’s death. But it was dramatically scrapped after the force learned that Newton had died.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Norman Scott in 1979 Photograph: Graham Turner/for the Guardian

A quick spot of Googling, however, might have given detectives enough leads to ascertain what became of him. He resurfaces in numerous articles written in 1994, when a coroner ruled out foul play after one Caroline Mayorcas fell 900ft to her death while climbing the Eiger in Switzerland with her partner, Hann Redwin. At the inquest, it emerged that Redwin was, in fact, Newton, and was living in Chiswick, west London.

Throughout the first decade of the millennium, the unusually named Redwin (there is speculation he chose his new name as an anagram of “winner hand”) became an avid contributor to a journal, the Geo Quarterly – “the independent amateur quarterly publication for Earth observation and weather satellite enthusiasts”.

He surfaced again in a 2015 edition of Pilot magazine, in an article about Redhill airfield near Gatwick. “I get into conversation with Hann Redwin whose Pipistrel motorised glider I spotted in a small hangar near the Tower,” the article recounts. “He’s here with his companion Patsy Frankham to conduct some tests on the Pipistrel.”

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As an excited press pack beat a path to Redhill, relatives of Frankham broke cover to confirm to MailOnline that he was alive and had moved his plane to a farm in Surrey. The news will do nothing to dissuade Scott from his view that the investigation into what he has always insisted was an attempt to murder him was a stitch-up by the political establishment.

Play Video 1:00 Jeremy Thorpe scandal: Norman Scott believes alleged hitman Andrew Newton is still alive - video

“I just don’t think anyone’s tried hard enough to look for him,” Scott tells the makers of a BBC Four documentary, The Jeremy Thorpe Scandal, to be broadcast tonight. “I thought [Gwent police] were doing something at last and soon found out that absolutely they weren’t: they were continuing the cover-up as far as I can see.”

Gwent police told the documentary makers: “Inquiries were completed which indicated Mr Newton was deceased. We have now revisited these inquiries and have identified information which indicates that Mr Newton may still be alive.”

• This article was corrected on 4 June 2018 because it said an alleged murder attempt on Norman Scott took place on Bodmin Moor.