‘Fantasist Nick’, 51, ‘changes story to tell court Edward Heath cuddled him on his yacht’

The VIP sex ring ‘fantasist’ known as ‘Nick’ today claimed he was ‘cuddled’ by Ted Heath on board his yacht.

Carl Beech, 51, told police that the former Tory leader ‘touched him’ as he lay next to him in the cabin of the Morning Cloud in Southampton marina. 

It came in his second day in the witness box, where he has repeated the accounts he gave to the police in 2014, which sparked the £2million Operation Midland into abuse by senior political and military figures.

Beech was asked about his one visit to Morning Cloud, which was moored in the Solent.

Beech says Savile raped him over a bath

Carl Beech (pictured outside court in March) claims he was abused by VIPs from politics, the Armed Forces and secret services and at his trial today the man known as ‘Nick’ appeared to change his story about Ted Heath 

Beech told police that Ted Heath 'touched him' on his yacht Morning Cloud (pictured) - but told the jury today he had hugged him

Beech told police that Ted Heath ‘touched him’ on his yacht Morning Cloud (pictured) – but told the jury today he had hugged him

He told the court that Mr Heath had wanted to take him out sailing and that he had burst into tears.

Timeline of Beech’s alleged falsehoods and the investigations they launched

2014/2015: Over more than 20 hours of recorded police interviews, Carl Beech makes lurid allegations of child rape and murder against senior Establishment figures including Ted Heath and Lord Brammall.

November 2014: The Met Police launch Operation Midland, which raids the homes of several elderly men looking for evidence to support Beech’s claims. A detective calls the accusations ‘credible and true’.

April 2015: D-Day veteran and former Army chief Lord Brammal interviewed.

June 2015: Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, whom Beech accused of child murder, interviewed under caution.

March 2016:  Beech notified no further action was to be taken in respect of the allegations he had made.

2016: Northumbria Police conclude Beech’s claims are ‘totally unfounded, hopelessly compromised, and irredeemably contradicted by other testimony’.

November 2, 2016: Police arrive to raid Beech’s home in Gloucester. 

January 23, 2018: Beech got £60,000 as an early pension from the NHS

February 6, 2018: He travels to Calais preparing to flee to Sweden, where he buys a cabin in the woods and lives under a series of assumed identities, travelling hundreds of miles from city to city to stay on the run

October 1, 2018: He was tracked down by Swedish and British police and arrested in advance of a 20-hour train journey to Gothenburg booked in the name of ‘Samuel Karlsson’.

2018: A highly critical review of Operation Midland reports police ‘acted like they were searching for bodies’ during raids on homes. 

2018: Beech pleads guilty to possessing indecent images of children, in a separate trial.

December 2018: restriction on reporting of Carl Beech’s real identity lifted.

May 2019: Beech goes on trial for perverting the course of justice and fraud.

He was asked by his barrister Collingwood Thompson, QC, what happened next.

Beech said: ‘He was very kind and comforting. If you had done that (cried) in front of some of the others you would have been punished for that but it was different with him.’

He went on to say: ‘We went into the cabin at the front and he just cuddled and comforted me.’

Mr Thompson asked: ‘Did anything else happen?’

Beech replied: ‘No.’

In an interview played to the jury earlier in the trial he gave a slightly different version of events.

In his interview with Detective Sergeant James Townly of the Metropolitan Police he said: ‘He was comforting um cuddled me um and ended up in the cabin just him and me and he didn’t penetrate me he just touched me. Didn’t have to do anything to him, and we just lay there um yeah that was about it really.’

Beech told DS Townly and the court that he only visited Mr Heath’s yacht once.

He also told jurors that former Home Secretary Leon Brittan raped him over a bath as he held his head under water, in the same way he claimed disgraced TV presenter Jimmy Savile had also done.

Beech also gave an account of the hit and run murder of a boy called Scott in the late 70s as they walked away from his school in Kingston upon Thames together.

The Metropolitan Police were unable to find ‘Scott’ – despite flying two detectives to Australia to interview one person of the same name who had been at school with Beech.

It was put to him by Mr Thompson: ‘It has been suggested that this is a figment of your imagination, what do you say to that assertion?’

He replied: ‘I know what happened, I was there. I know it took place.’

Beech has insisted his accounts of abuse by, amongst others, Mr Heath, ex Home Secretary Leon Brittan, one time head of UK land forces Lord Bramall and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor were all genuine.

The 51-year-old father of one, former nurse and £45,000-a-year NHS care quality inspector, is accused of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraudulently claiming £22,000 in criminal injuries compensation. 

This afternoon he gave a tearful account of the apparent murders of three boys which he claims to have witnessed.

Carl Beech’s voice broke with emotion several times as he spoke of the attacks he says were carried out by abusers he called The Group and on two occasions he had to pause to compose himself.

Carl Beech aged 10

Carl Beech aged 10

Carl Beech, pictured aged 10, when he claimed that he was sexually abused for the first time as he left primary school

‘Nick’ went to police because he was ‘angry about the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal’

Westminster paedophile gang accuser Carl Beech first went to the police because he was frustrated by the coverage of the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal, he told a court.

It was in 2012, as allegations about Savile came to the surface, that Beech spoke to the NSPCC, who advised him to go to the police.

It began a series of events that saw the launch of Operation Midland into his claims of the VIP abuse ring and has culminated in Beech facing trial for perverting the course of justice.

He told Newcastle Crown Court: ‘There had been a lot in the press regarding Jimmy Savile and I found it incredibly frustrating I suppose because it all focused on girls and women and I knew I had been involved as a boy.

‘There was an NSPCC helpline and I rang them to express my frustration that it wasn’t just girls and women.

‘They said they knew that and encouraged me to speak to Operation Yewtree. I did that and they referred it to Wiltshire Police.

‘I don’t think I was ready at that stage to come forward, I hadn’t even told my counsellor at that stage.’

From the witness box Beech accepted that a disclosure he made to his counsellor Vicki Paterson in 2012 about his abusive step-father tracing him later in his childhood had been mistaken.

It was not his step-father who found him, he said, it was the former head of MI5, Michael Hanley.

Beech had told Metropolitan Police officers that the last time he had seen his step-father Major Ray Beech was as he was being taken away in a police car in Bicester, Oxfordshire.

It emerged later in emails that he claimed to therapist Ms Paterson that Major Beech traced him after he and his mother later moved from Bicester to Kingston.

He was asked to clarify the matter by his barrister Collingwood Thompson and said: ‘It was Michael Hanley who found me.’

The former paediatric nurse also told jurors of an occasion where he was bitten by a snake as a result of the actions of his tormentors.

He said: ‘As far as I can remember it was a punishment. I was shut in an understairs cupboard in complete darkness and a snake was thrown in. I was bitten by the snake.’

Beech, 51, has claimed that one boy, ‘Scott’ was mown down in a car, a second was raped, stabbed and strangled by the former MP Harvey Proctor and third who was viciously beaten during abuse which former Home Secretary Leon Brittan was present at.

Beech described how he and other boys were taken to a London townhouse where Mr Proctor and another unnamed man were waiting.

The boy, Beech has claimed, was tied to a table and raped before Mr Proctor stabbed him in the arm.

The father-of-one from Gloucester briefly broke down as he told the court: ‘The boy was saying ‘I am sorry.’

‘I was begging for them to stop but they wouldn’t listen.

‘Harvey said I would be next. The other man then assaulted me, he bent me over the table and raped me at the same time. I was face down.

‘He (the boy) was holding my hand and squeezing my hand. He stopped squeezing my hand. The other men were doing what they were doing and Harvey had his hands around his neck.

‘They left the room again. I tried to wake him up but I couldn’t. They (the men) came back in and were laughing.’

He was asked by his barrister Collingwood Thompson, QC, if a potential identity for the boy had ever been suggested,

Beech answered: ‘It was possibly Martin Allen.’

Martin went missing from his London home in 1979 and has never been found.

Beech said that the third incident occurred around the same time at another London address with Harvey Proctor, Leon Brittan and Michael Hanley, the former head of MI5 present along with four or five others.

Beech described how he and three other boys were told to nominate which of them would die at the hands of their abusers. He said they refused but MIchael Hanley then ‘singled out’ a victim.

He wept as he told the court: ‘He was on the floor but they didn’t stop they just kept hitting him. He didn’t move, he was just like a doll, he didn’t move he just laid there.’

Previously the trial has been told Beech falsely claimed he had been raped by senior army officers and the disgraced television presenter Jimmy Savile.

He told the Metropolitan Police that around 15 men attended weekly abuse parties all over the South of England, including the late former Tory PM Ted Heath’s yacht, exclusive clubs and Dolphin Square, where many MPs lived near Westminster. Beech also said former MI5 and MI6 heads tortured him by tipping spiders over him, gave him electric shocks and threw darts at him. 

Carl Beech, 51, told detectives in interviews (pictured) that he had been passed around parties attended by powerful men, to be sexually abused

Carl Beech, 51, told detectives in interviews (pictured) that he had been passed around parties attended by powerful men, to be sexually abused

And he alleged the former Conservative Home Secretary Leon Brittan was also part of the ring. His claims led to the Met Police launching Operation Midland, which cost £2 million which was dropped after 16 months without anyone being charged. 

It was then that Northumbria Police were called in to investigate Beech and unpicked his alleged web of deceit, the court has heard. He denies 12 charges of perverting justice and one of fraud by falsely claiming £22,000 criminal injuries compensation. 

When the Met asked Northumbria Police to investigate Beech in 2016, cops raided the rented three-bedroom house in Gloucester where he lived with his son. 

They discovered on the drive a new £34,000 white Ford Mustang convertible which was bought with the compensation cash he received, it is alleged. 

Beech later fled to Sweden but was tracked down and extradited back to the UK to face justice.  

The trial continues. 

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