Sir Edward Heath’s main accuser is a jailed paedophile with mental health problems who has falsely confessed to murder.
His bombshell claim that as an 11-year-old boy he was raped by Sir Edward led to a £1.5million inquiry into paedophile allegations against the former prime minister.
Yesterday, after it emerged that the accuser was a habitual liar and ‘predatory sex offender’, Mike Veale, the police chief in charge of the two-year inquiry, was accused of misleading the public.
Wiltshire Police last week revealed that the rape claim was the most serious of seven sexual abuse allegations considered so credible that police would have interviewed the former Conservative leader had he still been alive.
Child abuse claims: Former Conservative prime minister Sir Edward Heath in the 1960s
The force’s Operation Conifer report, which the Wiltshire Police chief constable defended last Thursday, concluded that there was ‘no undermining evidence’ in relation to the rape claim, unlike many of the other allegations against Sir Edward which police investigated.
But now it has emerged that the man is a convicted sex offender who has previously falsely confessed to a murder. The criminal, who is in jail for sexually assaulting a teenage boy, was on remand when he told Wiltshire Police in 2015 that Sir Edward picked him up while he was hitchhiking on the A2 and raped him in a flat in Mayfair in 1961.
Despite the seriousness of his allegations to Wiltshire Police, the complainant, who has anonymity under the law, declared earlier this year: ‘I do not believe for one minute that Ted Heath was a paedophile.’
When he first made his allegations to the Metropolitan Police in 2015, child abuse detectives dropped their investigation within three months after concluding that ‘there were no lines of inquiry that could proportionately be pursued’.
But later that year he went to Wiltshire Police. The Daily Mail has learnt that he is writing a book behind bars detailing his allegations against Sir Edward, who died in 2005 aged 89, and has spent two years doing ‘research’.
Sir Edward died in 2005 aged 89
The complainant, who once worked at a children’s home, has been banned from having contact with children for the rest of his life because of his appalling history of sex attacks on youngsters. Described by a judge as ‘predatory sex offender’, he has multiple convictions for grooming and indecently assaulting boys, child pornography and gross indecency dating back four decades.
More than a decade ago he falsely confessed to a murder. On several occasions, he has gone on the run and once led police on a 100mph motorway chase. He is known to have mental health problems and has received psychiatric help. Yet last week Wiltshire Police presented his evidence as credible.
The claim was one of nine allegations about the Tory MP – eight of which proved to be groundless – that the force received before it controversially launched an appeal for victims outside Sir Edward’s home in August 2015.
Last week Mr Veale told a press conference he did not know if any of those seven ‘credible’ complainants were criminals, but added: ‘Some of the victims are challenged.’
Sir Edward’s friends and former colleagues have called for a judge-led inquiry to evaluate his guilt or innocence and have dismissed the investigation as a whitewash with no corroborating evidence.
Yesterday Sir Edward’s godson Lincoln Seligman said: ‘This accuser was known to be a liar, a paedophile and had falsely confessed to a murder.
‘Yet his accusation is the main plank of the chief constable’s list of allegations.
‘I understand that the rape allegation had, after investigation, been dismissed by the Met. How can Mr Veale say that this evidence is not grossly undermined. It beggars belief.’
Last night Wiltshire Police said: ‘We will not be drawn on any further operational detail, as to do so would potentially place victim anonymity at risk.’
The spokesman added that, since August 2015, the force had been in charge of investigating all allegations against Sir Edward, and had ‘reviewed any activity that has been undertaken by any other force’ relating to Sir Edward before this.
… But STILL police boss calls for fresh probe into ‘state cover-up’
By Arthur Martin for The Daily Mail
Faces grilling: Police boss Mike Veale
The embattled police chief in charge of the Sir Edward Heath investigation yesterday called for a new inquiry into discredited claims of a VIP child sex ring in Westminster.
Mike Veale said a fresh investigation was needed to ‘lance the boil’ of ‘sinister’ claims that a paedophile ring was covered up by the Establishment.
He made the claims despite an inquiry into such allegations against high-profile politicians and military leaders by Scotland Yard collapsing last year after it was revealed that the key claims were made by a fantasist.
Mr Veale, chief constable of Wiltshire Police, also faces the prospect of being grilled over his own conduct after Sir Edward’s supporters prepared to submit an official complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission against him and his officers over the way they conducted the inquiry. They accused Mr Veale’s force of mounting a ‘fishing expedition’ as part of an ‘unsatisfactory and prejudicial’ investigation into the former prime minister.
Lord Hunt of Wirral, chairman of the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation, also called for the Government to appoint a judge to lead a review of the investigation. ‘Sir Edward’s reputation has been unfairly tarnished,’ he said.
But Mr Veale defended his investigation into Sir Edward yesterday and called for ‘someone to look into the potential for cover-up or a conspiracy’ by the Establishment.
He said: ‘If any, if even one bit of this is true, what did the Government know, the Civil Service, the security services? Those questions need to be answered.
‘In the last two years I’ve spoken to people who genuinely believe… there are too many people making too many assertions… around the Establishment.
‘The boil needs to be lanced one way or another. If there is nothing to hide, open the doors.’