The ‘extraordinary tale’ of Carl Beech

A 51-year-old man who prosecutors say weaved an “extraordinary tale” about a Westminster paedophile ring is himself “a committed and manipulative paedophile”, a court has heard.

Carl Beech - previously known by the pseudonym Nick - told detectives that he’d witnessed three child murders, multiple rapes and widespread sexual abuse by a paedophile group that included a number of high-profile figures, reports The Times. Among those accused were former Conservative prime minister Sir Edward Heath, former head of the Armed Forces Lord Bramall, and ex-Tory home secretary Lord Brittan, who died while under investigation.

The allegations led to a £2m Metropolitan Police investigation, Operation Midland, “which ended with no further action being taken”, says the BBC.

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Prosecutor Tony Badenoch QC told a jury at Newcastle Crown Court this week that Beech’s story of an establishment child sex gang would be shown to be “incredible and untrue”.

Beech has pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud.

The jury also heard that the former NHS manager had been convicted of making and possessing indecent images of young boys and of voyeurism in a separate trial earlier this year.

Badenoch said that after police investigating the Westminster allegations found child porn images on devices at Beech’s Gloucester home, he tried to blame his teenage son, The Daily Telegraph reports.

That claim was just one in a long series of lies told by the accused man after he first went to police with his paedophile ring story, in 2014, according to the prosecutor. Beech even “used an encrypted email account to pose as ‘Fred’, another supposed victim of the group of VIPs”, reports The Times.

Badenoch said: “The Metropolitan Police in trying to speak to Fred went through Carl Beech initially. Carl Beech purported to be corresponding with Fred and eventually Fred made contact with the police, or so it appeared.”

But when detectives from Northumbria investigated the email account after taking over the case, they found “the person behind the encrypted email account was Carl Beech”, the QC continued.

The court also heard how Beech had “drawn sketches that appeared to be related to the abuse he claimed to have suffered, including demons and smaller figures surrounded by red”, reports Sky News.

The jury was played a video of a police interview in which he wept as he claimed a schoolmate was murdered after ignoring warnings from their abusers not to make friends.

Beech told officers: “I heard the car, the engine, and as I turned around to see what the noise was, it hit him. And it was thrown up into the air and everything just stopped. He was just left there. And there was no noise, nothing. Silent. He wasn’t moving.”

Northumbria Police’s inquiry into Beech found “many, many untruths” and concluded that “key elements of the story were totally unfounded, hopelessly compromised and irredeemably contradicted by other testimony”.

As “the net closed on him last year”, Beech fled to Sweden “until he was traced, detained on a European arrest warrant and brought back to Britain to face trial”, says The Times.

The trial continues and is expected to last up to three months.