THE ALIBI
The Prince, a Pimp, her Paedo and a Da Vinci Code Peer
A hereditary peer could be the key to unlocking Prince Andrew’s alibi for the night he is accused of sexual assault on a trafficked seventeen-year-old girl.
Lord Peter Loughborough, the 7th Earl of Rosslyn, is probably the poshest copper to have served in the Metropolitan police.
For the last twelve of his thirty-four years in the force, Eton-educated Loughborough was the commander in charge of Royalty Protection.
He took over shortly after Andrew’s alleged sexual assault on Virginia Roberts at the London mews house of socialite Ghislaine Maxwell in March 2001.
Ten years later, Loughborough was still at the helm when The Mail on Sunday first published Roberts’ testimony alongside this now infamous photo allegedly taken at Maxwell’s home.
Loughborough retired from the Met in 2014 to run the affairs of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, a position he still holds, which means that throughout the sex scandal he has remained in close contact with the royal household, the police and the government while looking after the future monarch.
Loughborough’s hereditary seat in the House of Lords is Rosslyn Castle in Scotland. Its chapel was made internationally famous by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as the place where the Holy Grail is buried.
Although historians have debunked that conspiracy theory, Loughborough has seen an upsurge in paying commoners flocking to his Midlothian tourist attraction and gift shop.
The Upsetter put a series of questions to the peer about Prince Andrew’s alibi, which like the Da Vinci Code is also looking like hokus pokus.
Moreso since the Queen stripped her so-called favourite son of His Royal Highness title last month.
That strategic announcement was intended to minimise any impact on yesterday’s Platinum jubilee marking the Queen’s seventy years on the throne.
Her decision to defenestrate Andrew was likely a last resort and taken after heavy scrutiny of the available evidence to see if there was anything persuasive to support his alibi.
In the end, the Queen cut him adrift as he faces a civil action in the US for the teenage rape and sexual assault of Virginia Roberts.
Andrew is set to be deposed on 10 March by her US lawyers. The date marks a darker anniversary - twenty one years to the day since the alleged sexual abuse in London.
Her lawyers will test every aspect of Andrew’s alibi for the night of 10 March 2001, the details of which first emerged during a carefully stage managed but disastrous interview he gave to the BBC in November 2019.
It was an alibi that in the words of Sex Pistol John Lydon took the British public for morons and resulted in no future for Andrew.
Roberts claims that Maxwell and Epstein pimped her out to the royal on three occasions, once in London and twice in the United States.
She says she danced with the sweaty prince, then 41, at the high society London nightclub Tramp, before having sex with him at Maxwell’s house down the road in Mayfair.
Andrew denies this and briefed the media that the photo with his arm around Roberts’ teenage waist is somehow doctored, a suggestion so far without forensic proof which she denies - although the original has yet to be produced to the Prince’s legal team.
At the time of the alleged sexual assault, Andrew was long divorced from the scandal prone Sarah Ferguson and living with his mum at Buckingham Palace.
He told the BBC that he had collected Beatrice, 12, the eldest of their two daughters, from a birthday party at Pizza Express in Woking, Surrey during the afternoon of 10 March.
He says he stayed all night at Sunninghill Park, the princesses’ residence, because Fergie was away.
Andrew also famously claims that he had lost the ability to sweat soon after being fired at during the 1982 Falklands War, where he served in the Royal Navy as a helicopter pilot.
The royal alibi has so far not been completely shot down, but it is significant that with so much at stake no royal protection officer who body-guarded the prince and princesses on the day and night in question nor anyone from within the Met’s royal protection squad has come forward to support it.
At the time, the squad was part of Met special operations and known as SO14. It was split into two types of armed royal protection officer.