The extraordinary story of how the man who said he was the victim of a VIP paedophile ring ended up on the run in Sweden

On a snowy bank overlooking an ice-covered river in the tiny, remote northern Swedish hamlet of Mjölan stands a small burgundy cabin. It would be unremarkable, were it not for one fact.

For six months last year it housed the man who triggered an ill-fated multimillion-pound police inquiry thousands of miles away in Britain that sent shockwaves through the heart of the political establishment.

It was, the Guardian discovered, the bolthole of 51-year-old Carl Beech – known as “Nick” before a judge stripped him of anonymity last year – whose claims of a Westminster VIP paedophile ring, supposedly responsible for the murder of three boys, sparked a £2m Scotland Yard investigation that closed in 2016 without a single arrest.

Beech – assuming different identities – moved to Sweden last year to set up a B&B, before going on the run from police for more than two months.

Beech, a father of one, has been found guilty of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one of fraud over his false claims and faces a lengthy prison sentence. But how did it get to this point?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carl Beech. Photograph: Facebook/Carl Beech

In 2014, Beech, a former nurse, claimed his stepfather Raymond, an army major, had sexually abused him as a child in the late 1970s and 80s, ferrying him to parties at exclusive private members’ clubs, Dolphin Square in London, and other locations – including swimming pools – attended by the former prime minister Sir Edward Heath, the former home secretary Leon Brittan, the then chief of the defence staff Lord Bramall, the ex-MI5 chief Sir Michael Hanley, as well as the former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, among others.

The allegations, later accepted as completely false, peddled via the now-discredited Exaro news agency to the Sunday People, which detailed them in a series of stories from July 2014 onwards, were fantastical. “VIP paedo ring sensation,” the tabloid boasted on its front page in one story. Exaro shut down in 2016, but relaunched last year under new ownership.

Children were claimed to have been sexually abused, raped, tortured and murdered by the gang.

Operation Midland: four top public figures falsely accused by 'Nick' Read more

During his 10-week trial at Newcastle crown court, Beech stood by his story and gave a vivid account of three alleged child murders, insisting: “I was there and I know it took place.” One child, a friend called “Scott”, was apparently deliberately mown down by the gang in a revenge hit-and-run attack after Beech claimed to have been warned by Hanley not to have any friends.

He also tearfully told the court he had tried to save another boy who he claimed was raped and strangled by Proctor. The child, Beech said, was “possibly” Martin Allen, the teenager who went missing in 1979 and was never found.

The detail was gruesome. He claimed Proctor and another man had tied the boy to a table, with the politician stabbing the child in the arm and cutting his chest and legs. “I tried to untie him, but I couldn’t. There was a lot of blood. He just kept saying sorry,” Beech told the court.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A court artist’s sketch of Carl Beech, known as Nick, at Newcastle crown court where he was tried on charges of perverting the course of justice and fraud. Photograph: Elizabeth Cook/PA

On a third occasion, Beech alleged that Hanley had ordered him and three other boys to choose which of them was to die at an abuse session before a child was beaten to death.

If most of his story sounded beyond belief, parts of it would have challenged even the most inventive of fiction writers. During one abuse party, Proctor was said to have threatened to cut Beech’s genitals with a penknife before handing him the weapon, which he then kept in a “memory box” for three decades until he handed it over to police. On another occasion, Hanley kidnapped Beech’s beloved pet dog, Heron, as a warning for missing a meet-up with his abusers.

In 2014, in an interview with the BBC, Nick, as he was then known, said the abusers were “quite open about who they were. They had no fear at all of being caught. It didn’t cross their mind. They created fear that penetrated every part of me, day in, day out.”

Amid political pressure – led by the Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, who met Beech to talk about his claims – following the police’s failure to bring Jimmy Savile to justice before his death, Scotland Yard began to investigate in earnest. Operation Midland was launched.

Though none of the alleged VIP abusers were named in initial reports, their identities became known when their properties were later searched in a string of police raids.

The Metropolitan police officer leading the investigation, Det Supt Kenny McDonald, described Beech’s account as “credible and true” on TV news bulletins in December 2014.

On 4 March 2015, the homes of Proctor, Bramall and Brittan were raided simultaneously. Brittan had died from cancer two months earlier, going to his grave with the allegations hanging over him. Bramall, a war hero, and Proctor were interviewed under caution.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harvey Proctor at a press conference in August 2015. Photograph: Lauren Hurley/PA

Proctor gave emotional testimony from the witness box during the trial, telling jurors the Metropolitan police’s high-profile investigation was a “fishing expedition” and a charade.

The late Labour MP Greville Janner, who died in 2015, was also among those Beech accused of child abuse. The accusations were vehemently denied by Janner’s barrister son, Daniel Janner QC, who called last year for Beech to be prosecuted.

He told the Guardian: “As with other distinguished public figures, my late father Lord Janner was the victim of wicked fantasists like Carl Beech. He made his accusations under the cloak of anonymity as ‘Nick’. Those he accused were named. The time has come for anonymity until charge for suspects.”

But Beech’s story began to unravel. Police could not find any evidence to support his sensational claims.

In August 2015, Proctor assembled journalists for a remarkable press conference in which he outlined the allegations in lurid detail. Proctor, who left the Commons in 1987 after pleading guilty to acts of gross indecency, defended himself with vigour. “I am a homosexual,” he said, “I am not a paedophile.”

The pendulum began to swing. Proctor told the Guardian: “What I’d set out to do had been achieved. Up until then the media were being fed scraps of information by the police and Exaro, who were profiting commercially from selling the stories. The police, for evidential reasons, did not want to give the press too much but just enough to keep the pot boiling in the hope that somebody would come forward.

“They were astonished that nobody came forward to corroborate what ‘Nick’ had said.”

In September, the Met took the unusual step of conceding that its officer had been wrong to suggest that it was pre-empting the result of the inquiry by earlier declaring its key witness’s account to be “credible and true”. The writing was on the wall.

In January 2016, it emerged that Beech had given an interview to a 2014 television documentary under the alias of “Stephen” in which he alleged he had been abused by Savile.

By March 2016, Operation Midland was closed after the police announced no further action would be taken against Bramall or Proctor. Heath had died in 2005. Lady Brittan and Bramall later received compensation from the Met after the force admitted the raids on their homes should never have taken place. Proctor is still pursuing legal action.

After Brittan died in 2015, Watson wrote a piece for the Sunday Mirror in which he quoted a “survivor” – thought to be Beech – who he said had told him that the late politician was “as close to evil as a human being could get”. Watson later apologised for the distress his comments had caused and said he would write to Brittan’s widow. During the trial, jurors heard how Beech had used nearly exactly the same phrase to describe Brittan in an email sent to his counsellor.

A retired judge, Sir Richard Henriques, was commissioned to review the investigation. His findings, published on 8 November 2016, were devastating for the police.

Senior detectives fell for Beech’s “false allegations” and then misled a judge to get warrants to search the homes of innocent members of the establishment, distressing them and their loved ones, the Henriques report found.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The remote property in Sweden that Carl Beech purchased after Northumbria police started to look into his allegations. Photograph: Crown Prosecution Service/PA

Police should have spotted that Beech was not credible earlier and halted the investigation sooner, the report added.

Northumbria police, appointed as an outside force, began investigating Beech for perverting the course of justice. On 2 November 2016, police searched his Gloucestershire home. An Acer laptop and a MacBook were seized and an iPad found in the front seat of his Ford Mustang sports car.

What officers discovered was staggering. Beech had hoarded 350 indecent images of children, dozens of which were graded category A – the most serious level. He had also secretly recorded a teenage schoolboy using the toilet.

Software that could disguise “forensic footprints” had been used on the devices. Police also found 21 indecent photographs of children hidden behind a calculator app on the iPad.

Beech was charged in June 2017 with four counts of making indecent photographs of children, one count of possessing indecent images of children and one count of voyeurism.

Significantly, the offences ranged over a three-year period from 2013 to 2016 – during which time he had gone to the media and police with his allegations.

It was as he awaited trial for these offences that he moved to Sweden. The only bail conditions imposed were that he was not allowed to contact any witness involved in the case, leaving him free to travel.

He purchased the small cabin in Mjölan, in the region of Överkalix, for 200,000 Swedish krona (£17,145) in February 2018.

His mother, Charmian, a retired vicar, later went to join him. She sold the £200,000 Shropshire home she had been sharing with her son in May 2018.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sonja Isaksson, Carl Beech’s neighbour in Sweden. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Sonja Isaksson, 57, remembers first meeting Beech in March last year. It turned out Beech had bought the cabin next to the property she shared with her partner. The community has only about 10 permanent residents, with many houses lying empty during the harsh winter.

“He was just an ordinary, friendly person,” she recalled.

Beech had plans to set up a B&B, the Guardian has established. He applied for permission to build four new small cabins to rent out on his plot of land and turn one of the existing outhouses into a fifth for his mother to live in.

On 20 February, when introducing himself to staff at Överkalix’s kommun, which deals with planning applications, he initially gave his name as Stephen, his middle name. On official planning documents he is listed as “Carl Anderson”. Separately, he used another name, Sam Williams, to enter into an agreement for a second property around two hours away in Sleddo.

Beech is understood to have returned briefly to the UK to attend a pre-trial hearing at the start of March 2018 before heading back to Scandinavia. He got to work excitedly promoting his venture on social media on a Facebook page called “66 degrees north bed & breakfast” with a succession of posts from April onwards charting his progress renovating the cabin.

Patrik Elemalm was employed by Beech to do some plumbing work on a new bathroom at the cabin last spring. “He introduced himself as Carl Anderson,” Elemalm said.

Beech ordered a bath and some taps, but never paid a 52,000 krona (£4,457) bill for the work, according to Elemalm. “He seemed polite, friendly. I don’t understand how a person like that could be a crook,” he said.

Per Andersson, who owns a carpentry firm, was also left out of pocket to the tune of 100,000 krona after one of his workmen helped renovate the cabin. He has given up all hope of retrieving the cash.

Meanwhile, as a friendly gesture, Isaksson invited Beech to her wedding on 7 July, and he accepted. But he never turned up. Four days earlier, the CPS had announced it was charging Beech with 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud after finding “sufficient evidence” following Northumbria police’s investigation. One of the charges related to £22,000 Beech had received from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority because of his abuse claims. It later transpired that Beech – who along with his wife was at one stage £70,000 in debt – had used some of the money to put down a deposit on a £34,000 white Ford Mustang convertible sports car.

Another charge detailed how he had set up and sent false information from a fake email account for a fictitious man called “Fred” whom he had named as being present when he was abused.

Isaksson believes she last saw Beech on 27 July. “At first we just thought he had gone on holiday and then he never came back,” Isaksson said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Patrik Elemalm. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

On 31 July, Beech was due to attend court in Worcester to stand trial over the child abuse images. He failed to show up. A European arrest warrant was issued, a copy of which has been seen by the Guardian. It lists 19 offences in total.

The warrant details how Beech made allegations to police from late 2012 to 2016 that “between 1975 and 1984, when he was aged between seven and 16, he was subjected to numerous sexual offences and offences of violence by military personnel, politicians, a television presenter and other unidentified men at various locations. He also alleged that he had witnessed the murders of three boys.”

The warrant said the “provably false” allegations were “deliberate, prolonged and detailed, and accompanied by the seeking of reassurance that the police were not only taking them seriously but they were actively investigating them”.

Beech managed to evade capture for two months, travelling across Sweden before he was finally arrested at Gothenburg train station on 1 October.

In two interviews with Swedish police, transcripts of which have been seen by the Guardian, he said he had been “wandering around in various places” including the far north of the country since August.

Later that month, he was extradited back to the UK to await trial. Beech initially lied to investigators and sought to frame his teenage son for the child abuse images, at first pleading not guilty before switching his plea and accepting he was responsible. Asked during the Newcastle trial why he had lied, Beech said: “Because I was totally ashamed of what I had done. I couldn’t admit it to myself. I was in denial.”

Beech, who had been the serial accuser, was now the accused.

It was years earlier, in late 2012, that Beech had first contacted police claiming his stepfather, Raymond, and Savile had abused him as a child. He was referred to Wiltshire police by Scotland Yard’s Operation Yewtree into the TV presenter Savile.

Though he alleged he had been abused by a group of up to 20 men, Beech named only his stepfather – who had died in 1995 – and the late Savile as perpetrators. But detectives could not substantiate the claims and shut the case after six months.

At the time, Beech had recently divorced his wife, Dawn, after 20 years of marriage. Their son went to live with his father.

Dawn confronted her ex-husband after recognising his silhouette in an interview that featured on a BBC Panorama episode in October 2015, but he denied it was him. The pair had married in 1992, four years after meeting during nursing training at the Royal Berkshire hospital in Reading. Dawn told the trial that during a breakdown her husband had confided in her about his claims that his stepfather had sexually abused him, but had never made any mention of a VIP paedophile ring during their marriage.

When he went to the police, Beech was a pillar of respectability. After originally training as a paediatric nurse, he had enjoyed a successful career as an NHS manager at the Great Western hospitals trust. In January 2012, he joined the medical watchdog the Care Quality Commission as an inspector. He was suspended in November 2016 and sacked the following June when charged by police.

Beech gave talks to children as young as five about the dangers of abuse on behalf of the NSPCC, the Guardian has learned. He volunteered for the charity’s school speakers programme from November 2012 until July 2015, delivering assemblies and workshops to young children.

Beech spoke to key stage 1 and 2 pupils at primary schools in Herefordshire as part of the NSPCC’s Speak Out Stay Safe scheme. It is understood the charity was aware at the time that Beech’s allegations had triggered Operation Midland, although he is not thought to have referred to his own experiences during the school talks.

He formally resigned and handed in his ID in February 2017. The charity said it had received no complaints about his behaviour while he had volunteered at 33 schools.

Beech was also a governor at two schools. One was Severn Vale, an academy in Quedgeley on the outskirts of Gloucester, where he was a governor from January 2014 until he was removed from the position in March 2017. The headteacher, Richard Johnson, described Beech as a “very intelligent, articulate individual”. He said the school had no safeguarding complaints about him and he had an enhanced DBS check.

Beech served as chair of governors at Beech Green primary school, also in Quedgeley, where he was involved for more than a decade. The headteacher, Julie Poulson, confirmed Beech had been a governor from 2006 until February 2017 and that no safeguarding concerns had been raised about him.

Beech’s claims have proved controversial with his family. His mother married Robert Gass in 1966. Beech was born in 1968 but his parents divorced in 1971, and he had little contact with his father, who had two children from a previous marriage and one more in a subsequent marriage.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carl Beech as a boy. He was born in 1968 and his parents divorced in 1971. Photograph: Handout

Beech’s half-sister Lin Brown, 58, who lives in Wallasey, Wirral, said she had not seen her half-brother for more than 25 years.

“From the things he’s done, I’ve disowned him. He’s not my brother,” she said.

Charmian went on to marry Raymond Beech, at the time a 40-year-old major in the Royal Artillery, in 1976 in Salisbury. Beech already had three children from his marriage to his first wife.

It is during this period, when Beech was living with his mother, stepfather and step-siblings, that he claimed he was sexually abused by Raymond and introduced to the VIP paedophile ring. Beech’s mother’s relationship with Raymond was short-lived: she moved out of the officer’s home with her son later the same year they had married. She is understood to believe her son’s claims about being abused by his stepfather.

Beech’s trial heard how his stepfather’s military records detailed that the major had a history of alcoholism and domestic violence, including against Charmian. However, there was no complaint of sexual assault or abuse in the records. He was discharged from the army in 1977 after being diagnosed with a personality disorder that led to him being “dangerously explosive” in his actions.

Raymond’s first wife, Joan Harborne, 80, and her three eldest children are understood to vehemently deny Beech’s allegations, making their feelings clear to Operation Midland investigators and then to Northumbria police.

In Sweden, locals in Överkalix are still scratching their heads at how the star witness of Operation Midland – which destroyed lives, reputations, and confidence among child abuse survivors – could have landed on their doorstep.

“For me, it’s a big mystery still,” said Elemalm the plumber, who has lived in the area his whole life. “It will always be.”