 After the trial Deakin disappeared from public view, as did Le Mesurier after unsuccessful attempts to sell "the real story" to national newspapers. In June 1981, in a series of articles printed in the News of the World, Holmes reasserted his allegation that Thorpe had asked him to kill Scott: "The incitement charge which Jeremy faced was true, and if I had gone into the witness box I 'd have had to tell the truth." Holmes, who died in 1990, had previously admitted his participation in a conspiracy to "frighten" Scott, though not to kill him. Bessell's account of the affair was published in America in 1980. He died in 1985; his final years were devoted to a campaign to stop the erosion of the San Diego beaches in California. Newton, like Le Mesurier, attempted to cash in on the case, but failed to find a newspaper willing to print his story. Scott's last recorded comments on the affair, immediately after the trial verdict, were that he was unsurprised by the outcome, but was upset by the aspersions on his character made by the judge from the safety of the bench. In December 2014, Scott, then aged 74, was reported to have recently relocated from Devon to Ireland. Sir Joseph Cantley died in 1993. His summing-up became the subject of a parody by the satirist Peter Cook, delivered shortly after the trial at The Secret Policeman's Ball in aid of Amnesty International. Cook's version, according to Freeman and Penrose, was "actually not that different from the original."
