Friends of Ray Gosling, the TV reporter who was arrested today on suspicion of murder, had known for more than a decade that he had killed his dying lover, the Guardian has learned.
Gosling, 70, had claimed to have kept the killing secret, but close friends have revealed that he told a small number of confidants about what happened a few years later. They did not tell police because they considered the actions he described to be assisted suicide.
They said he told them the killing took place about 20 years ago and that, although Gosling has so far described the unnamed victim as "a bit on the side", he knew him before he contracted Aids and during his illness. One friend also revealed that Gosling's pact with the man was two-way so that "if either of them were in a bad situation the other would do it".
Police are facing a difficult investigation because Gosling has said he will not volunteer details of the victim or when and where the killing took place, "even under torture".
Gosling was arrested at his sheltered accommodation shortly after dawn and interviewed for more than nine hours by Nottinghamshire police after he admitted to the killing on TV on Monday night.
His solicitor, Digby Johnson, said he was in "good spirits". Friends said Gosling had not expected to be arrested and had been planning to travel to Barrow-in-Furness today to make a Radio 4 documentary.
Detectives have already examined the unedited footage of Gosling's feature for BBC East Midlands TV on Monday to establish if there was any collusion with members of the crew who may have been told details of the crime. They are understood to be satisfied by Gosling's account that he decided to make the confession "there and then" when standing beside the grave of his long-term boyfriend, Bryn Allsop, for a piece to camera.
"He told me about it a long time ago," said Alan Horsfall, a fellow gay rights campaigner who has known Gosling for 40 years. "It came up in passing, he told me about it and that was that. He didn't make a big issue about it. It was some years after the event that he told me. I accepted it as assisted suicide. It was an act of great bravery, especially as he did it in a public place. I know the guy was in a bad state and Ray said they had a previous pact that if either of them was in a bad situation the other would do it."
Horsfall said it had not occurred to him to contact police and said he did not know the victim's name or where it happened. "He isn't a natural killer," he said. "It never occurred to me it was a crime."
"I was shocked but he described it in terms of an assisted suicide," said Bob Dickinson, a Radio 4 producer whom Gosling told about the killing last month. "I have known Ray for a long time, but he doesn't strike me as a murderer. He is a humane person. He is obsessed by the importance of ordinary people's lives. He knew he was going to use his own life as a story. He thought this could be another episode in his story."
The BBC today defended itself over the confession. "We believe we have handled the report sensitively and appropriately," a spokesman said. "We kept him fully informed about our representation of his story in the report and he understood that a revelation of this nature could have a number of consequences."
The BBC is under no legal obligation to refer the matter to the police in these circumstances and since transmission we have been approached by the police and are co-operating fully."