Raymond Scott lifts lid on his time in jail

Jan 2 2011 by Michael Kelly, Sunday Sun

CHAMPAGNE-LOVING Raymond Scott, jailed for handling the stolen Shakespeare First Folio, today lifts the lid on his time behind bars.

Scott, 53, was sentenced to eight years in jail in August after he tried to sell the 17th century book worth up to £3m to fund a lavish jet-set lifestyle with his young Cuban dancer girlfriend.

He had dreamed of luxury holidays in the sunshine drenched South of France and the Caribbean with beauty Heidy Garcia Rios, 23, on his arm.

Now he is just one of the lags, prisoner number A1347AV, at HMP Castington in isolated Northumberland.

In an exclusive interview Scott:

:: spoke of the nightmare moment the length of his sentence hit him;

:: revealed how inmates at tough Durham Jail where he was first sent helped him come to terms with life behind bars;

:: told how the self-confessed dilettante worked out in the gym with well known Tyneside hardman Stephen Sayers.

Scott revealed with a chuckle how he is in trouble again over a book. But this one was published four years ago and you can buy it for 97p on Amazon – Villains Paradise by Donald Serrell Thomas which he took out at Castington prison library and has received a letter warning him it is overdue for return.

After he was convicted of handling the Shakespeare First Folio and transporting stolen goods out of the UK after a three-week trial the case was adjourned for sentencing and he was sent to Durham Jail.

Scott said: “I did not think I would be convicted but if so the sentence would be a few years, say two or three. I genuinely was not worried. Ignorance was bliss. I should have known ‘The First Folio case’ would go out with a bang and not a whimper.”

Then, on August 2, he was handed his eight-year term. He said: “I was devastated. It was a waking nightmare. It really hit home a few days after sentencing when a piece of paper was pushed under my cell door.

“It informed me that my sentence spanned 2,898 days and would expire on 8/7/2018 and that my earliest release date was 24/2/2014 – 12 days after my 57th birthday when my mother, God willing, will have turned 86 and Heidy will be a still youthful 27.”

Scott, who can be affected by mood swings, was given much-needed support by fellow inmates for which he will be eternally grateful.

He said: “I’ve had nothing but sympathy from the outraged lads, some of them expecting long double figure sentences themselves.

“I was taken aside by Jim, an Irishman who has done 30 years and is soon to be repatriated to the Republic.

“He gave me invaluable advice about doing my time and more encouragement about an appeal. He said how for me a five or six year sentence can shrink to two or two and half years in an open prison with home leave.

“Most valuable of all it was just seeing someone caring, the sheer human decency. A prison officer who revealed he was a Salvationist branded the eight years ‘unchristian’.”