Robertson also believes that the judge made a serious error in his summing up of the case, telling the jury twice that the fact that none of Ward’s friends were prepared to vouch for him on the stand was significant.
Exactly where were his friends? Davenport-Hines says at least one suffered from police intimidation when he offered to give evidence for Ward’s defence. Society portrait painter Vasco Lazzolo said Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert threatened to plant pornography in his studio12 when he came forward. Lazzolo had first met Ward at the Slade during the war, when the art school had been relocated from London to Oxford. Lazzolo took the stand any way, and consequently faced several damaging allegations of impropriety.
The reluctance of others to identify themselves as one of his associates was more likely a result of the scandal they’d be embroiled in if they did rather than any reflection of Ward’s character, but in any case, it is not acceptable to ask juries to speculate. Robertson calls this a ‘palpable misdirection’.13
The judge was also wrong not to direct the jury on Ward’s previous ‘good character’. It seems that Mr Justice Marshall was conflicted by Ward’s open admission that he enjoyed promiscuity and equated this with a certain type of individual. He was biased and thus told the jury Ward was a person of bad character. However, Ward had no prior criminal convictions, making it less likely he was engaged in criminal behaviour and more likely to be telling the truth. The judge felt that Ward’s good character was effectively cancelled out by the bad, or what he considered, immoral, lifestyle he admitted he enjoyed. The judge equated Ward’s promiscuity with an increased likelihood that Ward would be involved in sexual offences.
Robertson argues that the judge was wrong not to give a corroboration warning to the members of the jury. Not only were the testimonies of the key witnesses likely influenced by the fact that the women had sold their stories, but Ward’s trial also positioned Keeler and Rice-Davies as prostitutes. As such, in the eyes of the law, the women were accomplices in the crime and therefore their evidence could not be simply accepted as fact. Instead, in such an instance, independent testimony was needed. The judge should have instructed the jury that they needed the evidence of Keeler and Rice-Davies corroborated by a completely independent source (and not that their separate evidence corroborated each other’s statements, for example).
There is also the problem that Ward’s conviction relied on Keeler and Rice-Davies being defined as prostitutes, particularly as the 1958 Sexual Offences Act used at the time contained no statutory definition of what this meant. Both women denied that they were prostitutes, and the evidence showed that while they did have sex with men, it was because they wanted to, rather than as a business transaction. Some of the men Keeler had relationships with, like Gordon, Edgecombe and Howard-Jones, were far from high rollers. Keeler slept with men she found attractive, even if that attraction was based on power and influence rather than a notion of romance. Rice-Davies was also not earning money by sleeping with men via a financial arrangement. She was the ‘kept’ mistress of Rachman, whom she genuinely had feelings for, and later looked to replace that relationship with one with Emil Savundra. Rice-Davies decided she did not want to continue seeing Savundra despite there being a financial incentive to continue to do so. If she were a prostitute sleeping with men for money, she would not have done this. While the jury may have found the lifestyle of Keeler and Rice-Davies distasteful, the women were not accepting cash for sex as a business deal.
If Keeler and Rice-Davies were prostitutes, under the law at the time, Robertson also points out that it was also up to the prosecution to prove that Ward ‘knowingly assisted’ sex work, supplying goods or services (in this case, his flat) for that purpose. No evidence was supplied to prove to the jury that Ward allowed the girls to flat share with him only because they were going to use the accommodation to earn money from sex. Instead, Ward was shown to be unaware Profumo had given any money to Keeler and Ward did not know Eynan and was therefore not aware of any arrangement between him and Keeler regarding money. Ward denied he had arranged sex for money to take place at Wimpole Mews between Keeler and ‘Charles’, as per the charge, and there was no evidence that Ward knew any money Keeler gave him to cover rent or other expenses came from such an encounter. Similarly, Rice-Davies stayed at the flat rent-free for a time and her parents stayed at a much-reduced rent, while they looked after her following an attempted suicide. Any money that Rice-Davies passed on to Ward to cover food or telephone use may have come from the money she received from Rachman and not from Savundra.
Robertson says that the judge was wrong to proceed with the trial after Ward’s suicide. Both counsels requested an adjournment and, using the discretion he was afforded as the judge, Marshall could have delayed proceedings, since there was no deadline to heed. Typically, trials should proceed with the defendant present, with the judge charged to ensure that happens where possible. Proceeding after a suicide attempt may also mean that the jury believes this means the defendant is more likely guilty.
Finally, Robertson argues that the judge didn’t secure a fair trial for Ward,14 because of the prejudicial publicity immediately before the trial. Initially Ward had been charged with offences involving abortion and brothel keeping. Despite these charges being dropped, the public perception of Ward had been affected by association with them. The scandal of Profumo’s denial of an affair with Keeler in the House, and then his resignation from the government, coloured people’s opinions and scandalised the country. Ward was labelled as a traitor and Keeler and Rice-Davies as prostitutes. Angry crowds gathered outside the Old Bailey as the trial started, which was just nineteen days after the committal. The speed at which the case came to court meant that the media furore didn’t die down before Ward took the stand. Marshall rejected a defence application to have the trial postponed.
There was also the problem that the principal witnesses stood to make money from media deals, perhaps encouraging embellishments and distortion of the truth either by the witnesses, or those ‘managing’ them and their potential incomes. It appears the judge didn’t warn the jury about convicting on the evidence presented by those with a financial incentive to see Ward convicted.
All these grounds for appeal would be clearly shown in the trial transcripts, which are made available for both appeals and for public purchase. However, Robertson says that in the past when two notable authors, Ludovic Kennedy and Wayland Young, were penning books on the Ward trial and asked for a copy of the transcripts, the Lord Chief Justice refused them without giving a reason. He also notes that the transcript of the evidence or summing up of the Ward trial is not available for reading at the National Archives either, making it unique, since it is the only public trial in British history subject to this ‘enforced secrecy’.15 Even today, the file is still officially closed until 2046.
Keeler called Ward’s trial a ‘farce’, with the case against him consisting of lies, half-truths and circumstantial evidence.16
In the witness box for two hours and thirty-eight minutes, Keeler says that says she had taken sedatives at the time of the trial.17 She also says she was coerced into signing her statement and that there was no ‘sex for rent operation’18 going on. In fact, she was deeply hurt when she had to testify against Ward.19
When Rice-Davies attended the Old Bailey, she says she wasn’t ready to see Ward in the dock, and that it came as a shock. Ward appeared with his broken glasses tied together with string, she says.20 Previously she had thought that the case against Ward would come to nothing, and that if they needed her for the prosecution, the case must be weak. Beforehand, Rice-Davies had heard that Ward was confident of the outcome, but her evidence didn’t come across as she’d imagined, and that you couldn’t tell it was the result of coercion.21 She left the courtroom knowing that the ‘trap was closing’, since she’d heard completely false evidence being given.22 It was during her time on the stand that when challenged over his denial of the affair she claimed to have had with Bill Astor, she replied, ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ a phrase that later featured in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.23
At the trial, Rice-Davies says that when she saw Ward, her courage left her completely, and that it was a court case in which the ‘accused was guilty until proved innocent’.24 She felt Marshall disliked Ward, while the prosecuting counsel, Griffith-Jones, insulted him. Rice-Davies says she hated Griffith-Jones, who was cold and better suited to a Victorian melodrama.25 She also thought that the witness Vickie Barrett was obviously suspect to everyone except the judge and admits that she’d underestimated the seriousness of events. She wanted to stand up and scream, but when she heard the summing up, Rice-Davies knew hope was lost.
Only half of the judge’s summing up was complete when the court adjourned on 30 July 1963, after which Ward committed suicide. He was dead by the time the verdict that he was guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and Rice-Davies came through.
When David Profumo asked his father what he thought about Ward, he replied he was ‘badly served’ in the end.27
In September 2017, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) decided it would not refer for appeal Ward’s 1963 conviction for living on the earnings of prostitution. The CCRC said that available records provided no evidence to support claims by Ward’s representatives that the trial was politically motivated and an abuse of process because it was instigated by the government. The Commission did find considerable merit in both Keeler’s later conviction for perjury, and the claim that media coverage may have prejudiced the trial.28
Despite this, the CCRC said it was using its discretion not to refer the case, although if Ward were still alive, it might have done so. The appeal was hampered because an original transcript of the judge’s summing up could not be found, which Geoffrey Robertson QC, representing the family, said was ‘mysterious – suspicious, almost’. He referred to the summing up as ‘wretchedly biased’.
The Commission maintained that there was no public interest in the case after fifty-four years and it could bring no personal benefit to Ward so long after he had died.29
Chapter 21
A Pardon for Keeler
In December 1963, Keeler pleaded guilty to the crime of perjury in the Metropolitan Police’s case against Gordon. At the time, receiving a fair trial would have been difficult for Keeler, because after the Profumo Affair hit the headlines and Ward had been convicted and died by suicide, she was a pariah in the minds of the press and public. Keeler had been advised to take a deal to avoid a longer prison sentence. Once convicted of perjury, however, which is considered a crime of dishonesty, any of her further accounts of any of the events that took place were dismissed as being unreliable. While pleading guilty meant a simpler court process, after her conviction, fewer details of the actual assault Keeler suffered, and the harassment she was facing at the time from Gordon, were reported.
On 14 June 2021, an application for Keeler to receive a pardon for perjury was sent to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). Four months later, the MoJ replied, directing the campaign instead to the Criminal Case Review Commission (CCRC) an independent body that investigates possible miscarriages of justice. Keeler’s son Seymour Platt spearheaded the campaign to clear his mother’s name. He is supported in the action by solicitor James Harbridge and barrister Felicity Gerry, and more recently by Dr Rebecca Helm, a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter, who helped answer some questions that the CCRC asked.
In March 2022, case notes and an application were sent to the CCRC, which has confirmed the case is now under review. If the CCRC decides that Keeler suffered a miscarriage of justice, it would be much more significant than a ruling by the MoJ, it would mean Keeler’s conviction could be expunged.
While Keeler did lie about who was there at the time of her assault, she didn’t lie about being attacked. For her son, the fact that as victim of an assault she was put in prison is intrinsically wrong. While, in her statement to the police, Keeler excluded the names of two men present at the attack, there were other witnesses that could corroborate her story whose details were supplied. Gordon had a history of violence against women, much of it directed at Keeler herself, and admitted to his crime in court. The two men Keeler did not name had specially asked her to keep them out of any dealings with the police. When they did come forward, however, they also stated that Keeler had been assaulted by Gordon as she had claimed. There was never any doubt that Gordon attacked Keeler, and yet, as Platt says, history ‘painted her as the villain’.
Gordon was Christine’s stalker, rapist and attacker, not her boyfriend as has so frequently been said, Platt argues. ‘History has taken the word of the rapist over the victim,’ he says. And when you look back at their shared history, it is littered with violence. Not long after Keeler met Gordon in 1961, he raped her at knifepoint in his flat, and he raped her again in early 1962. When Keeler told Ward that Gordon had raped her in 1961, Ward discouraged her from going to the police. Later, in spring 1962, after an axe-wielding Gordon held Christine and a friend hostage, Keeler dropped the charges because his family put pressure on her to do so. There’s no doubt that Keeler was young and easily influenced, but that is not a crime. She needed protection from Gordon.
Gordon stalked Keeler for many years, when she was dating, living with and even engaged to other men. He attacked Keeler in the street several times and turned up at her mother’s house too. There was no escaping him and his obsession with her. By 1962, Keeler was so frightened of Gordon that she had bought a gun for her own protection. Even today, only 1 in 100 rapes that are recorded by the police result in a charge that same year – let alone a conviction.1 The chance that in the 1960s Keeler would have been able to get the authorities to stop Gordon from actively pursuing and hurting her was very small. She was right to be terrified. And desperate.
Taking matters into her own hands and having lived in fear of Gordon for many years, in January 1963, Keeler agreed to meet Gordon for a final time at the Flamingo Club. On the understanding that he would then leave her alone, Keeler agreed to spend two nights with Gordon at his brother’s flat in Leytonstone. But breaking this agreement afterwards, Gordon went on to turn up at the Edgeware Road flat Keeler shared with Rice-Davies. Keeler was there with Kim Proctor, and when Paul Mann arrived, Keeler, Proctor and Mann escaped by car and immediately fled to France and then on to Spain. The timing of this incident coincided with the Edgecombe trial and was when Keeler became the ‘missing model’. It has been suggested that Keeler’s disappearance may have been pre-planned, either by her, or more likely by one of the many men manipulating her, to raise her ‘market value’ in the press. But Keeler’s life was often very complex, and this seems like another instance where events overtook her.
To understand how Keeler came to commit perjury, it’s necessary to understand the events leading up to her attack, her state of mind at the time and her motivation for lying about the attack Gordon was on trial for.
In April 1963, Gordon was still harassing Keeler, who was by this time living with Paula Hamilton-Marshall and her brother John in Devonshire Street. Gordon came to the property on 12 April and assaulted John Hamilton-Marshall, for which he was arrested. Gordon was bailed this time by Ward, however, and according to court records Platt has found, Gordon was told by Ward that ‘Christine wanted to see me’. Keeler clearly did not want to see Gordon and had not wanted to for a very long time, if ever. Why would Ward have encouraged Gordon to seek out Keeler?
Just days later, Gordon returned to the Devonshire Street flat to find Keeler. She had already had a physical fight with John Hamilton-Marshall at the flat after he became aggressive with his sister. Keeler maintained only two blows were exchanged, although John Hamilton-Marshall was later quoted in the press as saying that he was ‘responsible for all her injuries’ that were later attributed to Gordon’s assault on her. After the altercation, John Hamilton-Marshall left the flat and Clarence Camacchio and Rudolph Fenton, friends of Paula Hamilton-Marshall, arrived. One of the men was on probation, but they were both married and of West Indian descent, with a distrust of the police.
Planning to head out to a club in the early hours of 18 April, Keeler left the flat followed by Fenton then Camacchio. Hamilton-Marshall was left at the top of the stairs. Gordon had been waiting outside the address and attacked Keeler. When Hamilton-Marshall saw that Gordon had struck Keeler, she called the police as Keeler ran back to the safety of the flat. The men prevented Gordon from entering the flat and he left.
Believing their involvement to be incidental, and not wanting them to be in trouble with the authorities or their wives, when the police arrived, as asked, Keeler didn’t mention Camacchio and Fenton. The two men hid inside the flat while the police were there. In the version of events Keeler gave the police, she says that she and Hamilton-Marshall shut the door on Gordon to keep him out. A doctor examined Keeler and said that her injuries were consistent with the use of deliberate force she’d described Gordon using.
The day after, when Gordon was arrested for the assault, Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert also questioned him about the Ward case, despite the fact the two were separate.
Despite Gordon admitting that he hit Keeler at the trial itself, Knightley and Kennedy have a very different account of the assault. They say that the entire event was cooked up by the police after Keeler had told Herbert and Burrows she’d had a fight with a friend, getting a black eye and bruises (it was the truth that Hamilton-Marshall had inflicted the injuries, however). It was the police that suggested Keeler then call Gordon over to her flat, where he could be apprehended and have Keeler’s injuries pinned on him. For Keeler, this was an opportunity to be rid of Gordon, and for the police? It gave them a chance to convince Gordon to say certain things about Ward in return for his freedom. Unfortunately, Gordon refused to cooperate.2
However, Platt points out that Keeler was a valuable witness for the prosecution in Ward’s case. Without Keeler’s evidence against Ward, he may have not been convicted, just as Edgecombe had escaped some of his charges when Keeler disappeared to Spain. If Gordon’s attack on Keeler had happened and had been successful, and she had been injured or worse, Keeler may not have been able to be a witness in the Ward trial. Was it a coincidence that Ward had paid Gordon’s bail for his earlier attack on John Hamilton-Marshall, and, it seems, told Gordon that Keeler wanted to speak to him, even though Ward knew of the anguish the violent Gordon had caused Keeler for years beforehand? According to Platt, Gordon also thought Keeler was pregnant. Who had told him that?
In 1989, Keeler herself spoke of receiving a warning message via Paul Mann, that suggested Ward would ‘get her’ for the Gordon case if she didn’t put the blame on the police. Later both John Hamilton-Marshall and Robin Drury gave statements to the police and press, discrediting Keeler. What were their motivations? Was it financial or were they helping a friend? Hamilton-Marshall told the police he was responsible for all of Keeler’s injuries, and Robin Drury, who had failed to extort money from Keeler, instead handed over to the police the interview tapes he had made with her. A discredited Keeler would have been very helpful for Ward’s defence.
When Fenton and Camacchio were finally forced to give witness accounts, they supported Keeler’s claim she had been assaulted by Gordon. However, Keeler, Paula Hamilton-Marshall and their housekeeper, Olive Brooker, were all charged with perjury for failing to mention that the two men witnessed the attack. At the time, Paula Hamilton-Marshall had a nine-month-old baby, which Platt says made the sending of her to prison seem particularly cruel and unnecessary to his mother.
Keeler’s perjury conviction is one of the main legal arguments in the appeal to have Ward’s conviction to be overturned. It’s ironic that even now, the use of something that happened to Keeler is seen as key to Ward’s redemption. Some of the argument rests on the fact that the judge in Gordon’s appeal did not send a strong enough message about Keeler’s perjury to the Ward trial, which was ongoing at the time. Platt says that the original court transcripts show that the judge did understand that the essence of Keeler’s testimony was true. There’s little doubt that, like so many times before, Gordon assaulted Keeler in some way that day, but because she was labelled a perjurer by this case, was she a less reliable witness against Ward? The case against Ward was flawed in many ways and Keeler, like others, was not a willing witness. Much of her ‘evidence’ was coerced out of her. Perhaps her perjury was not as important as it was made to appear.
