Wife's Alleged Affair with Top Cop Puts BigLaw Partner on Witness Seat in High-Profile Arson Case
Oct. 21, 2009 clearly was not a good day for Ian Gray.
Arriving home from a business trip, the Eversheds litigation head was told by his wife that she was having an affair, and that her lover had been receiving threatening e-mails from an “iangray666,” according to the Daily Mail and Moortown Today.
Unbenownst to him at that time, his wife had also recently filed for divorce. Gray assured her that he knew nothing about the e-mails, which were eventually determined by police to have been sent by a friend or friends of the estranged wife of his own wife’s lover.
Then Gray’s wife went out and, after he had put the kids to bed at their house, two unknown men showed up at the door, the 44-year-old Gray told a Swindon Crown Court jury this week. The two men eventually persuaded him they were, in fact, police officers so he let them in. They promptly arrested him for conspiracy to commit arson and took him into custody.
At 4:30 the next morning, Oct. 22, he talked to detectives for the first time and later that day he was released on bail, reports the Express. However, authorities seized his computers and work BlackBerry, which contained a lot of confidential material, he told the jury.
By December, Gray had been cleared of the arson of his wife’s lover’s car, which had been been destroyed by a fire near their Oxford home while Gray was in Dublin on the business trip.
Now Gray is testifying in the criminal trial of his wife’s lover. A top police officer, the defendant is accused of having torched his own car and set Gray up to take the blame for the crime as the officer used the insurance proceeds to purchase an Audi convertible, the three newspapers recount.
The defendant, Chief Superintendant Jim Trotman, 45, of the Thames Valley Police, is charged with arson, attempting to pervert the course of justice and fraud by false representation. He says he is innocent.
His own wife, Charlotte Trotman, from whom he separated in June 2009 also testified. A 43-year-old solicitor, she said she remembered he had told her at the time of the fire only that the torched vehicle was “burnt out” and said he remains a good father, according to the articles.
The prosecution contends Jim Trotman knew officers from his own police force were going to arrest Gray concerning the car fire that Trotman had himself set and did nothing to stop them.
Additional coverage:
Daily Mail: “Police chief ‘torched his car and blamed lover’s husband’ “
Oxford Mail: “Jury told about top cop’s love triangle and arson attack”
