Focus on the life of Raymond Scott as he faces jail

Jul 11 2010 by Mike Kelly, Sunday Sun

RAYMOND Scott faces jail for trying to sell the £1m Shakespeare First Folio to fund his life with his Cuban dancer lover. Mike Kelly has spent the last 18 months getting to know the man to write a book with him on the bizarre case.

JUST last week, as his trial reached a crucial point and there still seemed a very slim possibility he might be cleared of the charges he faced, Raymond Scott walked into Peterlee police station and handed over two stolen paintings and an old Latin dictionary.

I met him the following night, as had become our habit during the three-week trial, to mull over the day’s court proceedings. I asked what had possessed him to hand over the book and paintings.

Scott explained: "The Russian chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal used to sacrifice pieces – a knight or a bishop – just to confuse his opponents. Think of this as my Tal move."

It was a grandiose excuse for a contrary action that is typical of him – a spoilt child in a 53-year-old man’s body. He certainly confused people, not least the man representing him in court, Toby Hedworth QC as it had done untold damage to what little chance he had left of getting off. "Toby wasn’t best pleased," Scott admitted.

Today Raymond Rickett Scott is in custody awaiting sentence after being found guilty of handling stolen goods and removing goods from the UK – less formally known as smuggling. Psychiatric reports are being prepared and Judge Richard Lowden has warned him to expect a "substantial custodial sentence". The reports should make interesting reading.

The three-week trial which ended on Friday at Newcastle Crown Court was the climax of a two-year investigation into how Scott came to have in his possession a copy of the Shakespeare First Folio stolen from Durham University library in 1998.

The Folio is a collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623 around seven years after his death. It is widely acknowledged as the most important secular book in the English language as without it half of those plays, including Macbeth and Twelfth Night, would have been lost forever.

In June 2008 he had strolled into the Shakespeare Folger Library in Washington DC with the bulky book tucked into a battered Louis Vuitton case. He was dressed head-to-foot in designer white clothes, wearing a Cartier watch, Rolex bracelet, Versace rings and Tiffany sunglasses.

Not surprisingly, staff at the august establishment more used to aged academics using their facilities and who partake of tea and cakes in a quaint ritual at 3pm every working day were immediately suspicious. Head librarian Richard Kuhta, who was to give evidence at the trial, sniffily described Scott as looking like an "ageing football fan".

Experts at the Folger, which houses 79 of the remaining 228 First Folios left in the world, swiftly came to the conclusion it was one of them. However, they wanted to bring in independent expert Stephen Massey to confirm it as Scott not only wanted it authenticated but a value put on the Folio which the Folger could not do.

Massey did indeed confirm it was a First Folio but also that it was the one stolen from Durham in 1998. The FBI in the US contacted Durham Constabulary – Scott had left his home address at Wigeon Close in Washington, Tyne and Wear, with them – and he was arrested.

It was shortly before he was charged in January 2009 with theft and handling stolen goods in relation to the Folio that I first met Scott, having been contracted by Newcastle publishers Tonto Books to write a book on the case with him called "Shakespeare and Love".