An ex-nurse who allegedly invented claims about a murderous VIP paedophile ring deliberately misled detectives in order to claim criminal injury compensation, a court heard.
Carl Beech, 51, is currently on trial over allegations that he made up stories that a high-profile group of men – including former prime minister Edward Heath, former home secretary Lord Brittan, Field Marshal Lord Bramall and ex-Conservative MP Harvey Proctor – abused him in the 1970s and 1980s when he was a child.
His allegations prompted a £2m investigation, Operation Midland, which the Metropolitan Police eventually closed without having made a single arrest.
Newcastle Crown Court heard yesterday how the alleged fantasist first attended an interview with Wiltshire Police in December 2012, during which prosecutors said he deliberately withheld information and lied to the force.
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Jurors heard how the defendant failed to disclose the names of many of his supposed abusers – referring by name only to his stepfather Major Ray Beech and Jimmy Savile – and contradicted the accounts he would later give to the Metropolitan Police in 2014.
The court was also told how, during the interview, Beech suggested that he had been abused by “diplomats”.
When asked in front of jurors whether he had deliberately withheld information about this during the interview, Beech revealed these people were men called “Abdullah” and “Turkey”, who he alleged had abused him at the Ritz Hotel, Winfield House and the “Saudi embassy” in London.
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Beech told the court he had decided before the interview at Swindon police station on 6 December 2012 that he “wasn’t ready” to give Detective Constable Mark Lewis, from Wiltshire Police, full details of what had supposedly happened to him at the hands of his “abusers”.
“There was some information that I just could not release to them,” he added.
Questioning the defendant in court, prosecutor Tony Badenoch QC alleged that he had “intentionally misled officers” in order to get a crime reference number which he could then use to make a claim with the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA).
The prosecutor said: “You decided to make a claim, based on those falsehoods, for money from the state.”
Jurors had previously heard how the defendant was awarded £22,000 from the CICA in 2015, after reporting injuries he had supposedly suffered at the hands of his supposed abusers, who he referred to during police interviews as “The Group”.
The court heard how Beech “deliberately misled” Wiltshire Police in 2012 through his failure to provide the names of many of his supposed abusers.
He said: “I couldn’t bring myself – I couldn’t share all that information, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do it.
“I couldn’t comprehend it myself, let alone tell the police about it.
“I did not want to give the full information, that’s true.”
Jurors had previously heard how Beech later told Metropolitan Police officers that he had a childhood friend called “John” who could act as a corroborative witness to his account of the “abuse” he said he had suffered.
But the defendant said that, during the 2012 interview, he did not feel he could give “John’s” name and instead referred to him by another name, “Aubrey”, which he did not tell the Wiltshire Police officer was in fact “a pseudonym”.
Beech told jurors: “It was difficult because I was put under a great deal of pressure at the time to give names that I did not want to give.”
But Badenoch said that, in giving the wrong name and in withholding information, Beech had caused Wiltshire Police to undertake a five-month investigation which the defendant knew would probably fail.
The prosecutor told how the defendant failed to correct “Aubrey’s” name to “John” during a later meeting with Lewis.
Beech has previously refused to give “John’s” surname in open court, saying that he does not have his permission.
When asked to provide further details about him, such as where he lived, where he had attended school and whether he had any siblings, Beech said he had never asked him.
Badenoch also explained how the defendant had referred during the interview with Wiltshire Police to injuries he supposedly sustained during a particular incident at the hands of “The Group”, but did not elaborate further.
The prosecutor said: “So, you were prepared to say that you had been raped and abused, but you were not prepared to say that you got some injuries?”
When Beech was unable to give a rough time for when the incident might have happened, the prosecutor said: “You can’t help us with any of the details Mr Beech because you’re making it all up, aren’t you?”
Beech, who has pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one of fraud, denied this.
His trial continues.
Picture: Crown Prosecution Service/PA Wire
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