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Jeremy Thorpe is charged with conspiracy to murder

Looking pale and drawn, the former leader of Britain's Liberal Party was driven last week to the police station in the small Somerset town of Minehead. A court clerk asked whether his name was John Jeremy Thorpe. The answer was an all but inaudible "It is." Following a hearing that lasted a scant 21 minutes, the slight, dapper Thorpe, 49, was released on $10,000 bail after being formally charged with conspiracy to murder. The alleged target: Norman Scott, 37, a down-and-out male model who 2 1/2 years ago publicly claimed that he and Thorpe had had a homosexual relationship. The stunning legal action presented Britons with their greatest political scandal since the Profumo sex-and-national-security expose of 1963.

Thorpe had denied Scott's original homosexuality charge, but he shortly resigned as head of the Liberal Party, although he continued to serve as M.P. for North Devon. However, Scott also complained of a death threat, and police started a further investigation.

Charged with Thorpe last week were David Holmes, 46, a Manchester financial consultant and former deputy treasurer of the Liberals, and George Deakin, 35, and John Le Mesurier, 44, both business associates of Holmes'. All four had been under investigation since October 1977, following the public confession by a former airline pilot, Andrew Newton, 33, that he had been offered roughly $10,000 by a nameless "prominent Liberal" and friend of Thorpe's to murder Scott and thus silence the claims of homosexual liaison. Newton had been sentenced to two years in prison after shooting Scott's dog and threatening the indigent model. -

At the time of his trial, Newton maintained that Scott had been blackmailing him. After his release from prison in July 1977, however, Newton claimed that his run-in with Scott was actually the result of a "contract" to murder the man. The only reason that Scott was not dead, said Newton, was that "I couldn't go through with it." Although Newton's confession was considered suspect by many, it was enough to set the police digging further in the direction of Thorpe's chum, David Holmes, who had admitted to paying Norman Scott $7,000 in hush money before Britain's February 1974 general elections, allegedly "without the knowledge" of Thorpe.

Questioned by reporters at the time of Newton's revelation, Thorpe flatly denied any involvement in a murder plot. Now the looming agonies of a trial can only add to the political and emotional demolition of a once ebullient man who, just four years ago, was one of the fastest rising stars on the British electoral scene. In the 1974 elections, Thorpe brought the Liberals to their highest level of popularity in many decades. For both party and politician, the road has led downhill ever since. Last week's events made that path look much, much steeper.

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