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Operation Yewtree - First person to be charged found dead
Found dead after missing first day of trial.
David Smith, a former BBC chauffeur and the first person to be charged as part of Operation Yewtree prompted by the exposure of Jimmy Savile as a serial sex abuser, has been found dead at his home.
Mr Smith, 66, was due to stand trial on Monday for allegedly abusing a 12-year-old boy in 1984. When he failed to arrive in court judges issued a warrant ordering Smith to appear the following day. But when officers arrived at his home in Lewisham, south-east London, on Monday afternoon they found a body.
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...and what would you suggest is the alternative? letting the accused off?
i dont think an innocent person would take their own life, after all this time there has to be strong enough evidence.
the bbc story points out a history including prison.
That would backfire though as conspiracy nut would want to investigate the case even more
It is quite laughable that the police could not find him in 2002 despite the fact that he was in prison.
22 previous convictions for similar offences. Really unbelievable.
My dad did, several years after the case collapsed when the allegations were found to be wholly malicious. The whispering never stopped.
Mind you, he didn't have 22 previous convictions for child abuse.
Of course, if this man DID have 22 previous convictions of a similar nature and was - in this particular case - completely innocent, he might well have been driven to despair and believed that there was no point protesting his innocence because nobody would believe him.
It's unlikely that we will ever know.
My guess is that he knew the right people. It is unbelievable how they never caught up with him. I'm thinking the police in his area probably knew that he had information on powerful people, so didn't bother going after him. Anyone else and he'd have been monitored and the police would have known his exact whereabouts.
If he was innocent of the charges, that could very well have been the case. Thinking about it more, he could have been innocent of this crime. This charge can be pinned to him now though, what with him being dead. This is what the police down there might think.
Could be this as well. People in power could probably get away with anything if they're the right people.
http://news.sky.com/story/1161137/savile-sex-abuse-investigation-two-arrests
If found guilty though, he'd have been out by Christmas, so no need to have topped himself, as its only weeks away.
Some were arrested in the past and we're well known, but charges dropped. I think some may know who l mean.
Yes the 64 year old has been named by the BBC on twitter. It is now in the public domain.
:eek:
The "Yewtree" casualties and offshoots of that "Operation" have been killing themselves for years, ever since they were abused and are still doing so when they can no longer live with the appalling fallout from that abuse.