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| Photo of Redhill Airfield from Geograph © Carl Ayling |
Norman Scott is still with us and has been interviewed about the series, but Jeremy Thorpe, David Holmes and Peter Bessell are all dead.
What has become of Thorpe and Holmes's co-accused John Le Mesurier (no, not the actor) and George Deakin is a mystery to me, other than that the latter's nephew was the guitarist in Black Lace.
I thought Andrew Newton, who shot Rinka and according to the prosecution case tried to shoot Scott, was dead, but I can find no source for this.
What I did find was what looks very like a recent encounter with him.
Newton last appeared in the papers in 1994, when he gave evidence at an inquest into the death of a woman on the Eiger. We then learnt he had changed his name to "Hann Redwin".
Which makes this 2015 article from Pilot about Redhill Airfield very interesting:
While I’m waiting I get into conversation with Hann Redwin whose Pipistrel motorised glider I spotted in a small hangar near the Tower. He’s here with his companion Patsy Frankham to conduct some tests on the Pipistrel.
Hann used to fly for the airlines and is a serial homebuilder with what sounds like a superbly-equipped workshop (a lathe is mentioned) in Newgate. After completing two homebuilds and almost finishing a third, a Zenair, if I understood him correctly, he’s abandoning aircraft building to concentrate on sailing, which I gather is more Patsy’s thing.Given that Andrew Newton had been an airline pilot, this must be him.
Given that the 1994 newspaper coverage describes Andrew Newton/Hann Redwin as being 46 at the time of the climbing accident (which would have made him 27 at the time of the shooting), that would suggest a birth date c.1948, making him only 70 now - younger than Norman Scott.
ReplyDeleteI believe Le Mesurier passed away over a decade ago. Deakin, as far as I know, is still alive (he was listed as being retired in Wales at the time of the Rinkagate book published in 1996), and I think is about the same age as Scott.