Articles published in the News of the World under a fake byline are being examined by detectives from Operation Weeting, according to The Independent.
The paper claimed that detectives are interested in almost 300 articles which were attributed to “Edward Trevor” in an apparent bid to hide the author’s identity.
Trevor specialised in sex scandals and celebrity gossip including a scoop involving TV host Angus Deaton who was revealed by Trevor to have ‘hired a hooker so he could enjoy a three-in-a-bed drug-fuelled sex romp … with his secret mistress”.
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The Independent says that another celeb story attributed to Trevor claimed Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones had ‘told friends’that she planned to bypass Hollywood to marry Michael Douglas in a Welsh chapel.
However, The Independent claimed work published under the pseudonym was sometimes produced out of “malice”.
Some of Trevor’s stories bordered on the bizarre with tales of Britain’s discovery of an e-Bomb that ‘neutralises the enemy with a volt from the blue.’Another featured the life of a husband suffocated by his wife’s 52in bust.
The Independent claims that the use of the house byline was usually innocuous, and frequently used to protect a journalist moonlighting from another news organisation or a writer who wished to maintain their relationship with the subject of a story.
Trevor’s name was also used to cover events closer to home – including the reporting of a speech by Les Hinton, then executive chairman of the paper’s publisher News International.
Operation Weeting commenced in January last year to investigate allegations of phone-hacking at the News of the World.
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