The Sun’s royal editor’s life was “torn to pieces” when he was arrested in relation to an alleged criminal offence he didn’t even know existed, a court has heard.
Duncan Larcombe was suspended from the profession he loved and was good at and had waited three years to put his version of events, his barrister told jurors the Old Bailey.
Reports he wrote about Prince Harry and Prince William at Sandhurst were all in the public interest and he simply requested payments for an instructor at the military school who offered assistance because that is what the Sun does, pays for stories, jurors were told.
Larcombe is on trial for allegedly aiding and abetting colour sergeant John Hardy, who has been charged with misconduct in public office for leaking information to the Sun for cash.
The jury were told Larcombe was a “serious heavyweight journalist with ethics and morals which he applies”, that there was not a single complaint from the royal palace or the princes about this stories and all he wanted to do was show they were not getting favourable treatment at Sandhurst.
They were reminded by his counsel, Richard Kovalevsky, that he had started work at the Sun in 2001 and had resigned twice because of disagreements with management.
The first time was when he refused to go into a brothel to investigate a story about an MP and a rent boy. The second time was when he went to cover the tsunami in Thailand and discovered a hitherto unknown village affected by the tidal wave.
“There were bodies everywhere, in the sea, in the fields, all over the place, thousands of bodies, and he wrote copy on it and submitted it. Copy wasn’t taken up. He was asked to write something about a minor celebrity who had got injured. He resigned,” Kovalevsky told jurors.
“The man you are trying is a serious heavyweight journalist with ethics and morals which he applies,” he added.
“When you judge Duncan Larcombe, this is of course a man who has now waited nearly three years since his life was pretty much torn to pieces by a knock on the door, an arrest, for a trial for an offence he had never heard, which he had never been alerted was wrong.
“[He was] taken away from a profession at which he was very good at and loved and essentially taken away from his life, waiting so that he could sit before you in a court, be it in the Old Bailey or anywhere and give you his true account,” said Kovalevsky.
He reminded the the jury that Larcombe had said he was no criminal – he had said. “I didn’t go into journalist to become a criminal, I hope this court appreciates I am not a criminal.”
Kovalevesky said the words had “weight” and should be borne in mind in deliberations. He added that the prosecution had said in its closing speech that each of the defendants in the case had been “less than truthful”.
He said Larcombe had “a right to feel pretty upset about that” particularly when a series of palace officials and former officials had lined up to testify about the good working relationship he had with them as royal editor of the paper.
He reminded them of Larcombe’s testimony in which he explained how he applied his personal code of ethics.
He had pulled away from an island off Mozambique when he was asked to report on Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy. He did the same at Klosters to allow Prince William and Kate Middleton privacy while skiing and reported to police photographs of the royal couple on holidays which he suspected to have been stolen.
The trial continues tomorrow with the closing speech for John Hardy, the colour sergeant and his wife Claire Hardy, who has also been charged with aiding and abetting her husband.