Rhino-horn seller gets 15 months

A MAN serving life for murdering his wife was yesterday given an extra 15 months for his bungled attempt to sell his hoard of rhino horn while still in prison, writes Nicholas Schoon.

Essex antiques dealer Wilfred Bull, aged 63, had wanted to sell his private stockpile of the horns to provide him with a lump sum after emerging from his long jail sentence.

But an RSPCA and police operation caught him and three associates red- handed in their attempt to break the law by marketing the products from a highly endangered species.

Before Bull had been convicted of murder in 1985 he used to sell horns. At that time it was still legal, but it was then outlawed in the UK as governments around the world recognised the danger posed to rhino species by poaching. Their horns can fetch huge sums in the Middle and Far East, for use as dagger handles and aphrodisiac.

In 1996 Bull began to sell the horns from Lincoln prison through his girlfriend, Carol Scotchford-Hughes, who had been his lover at the time he murdered his wife. David Eley and his girlfriend, Elaine Arscott, were brought into the plot.

It was estimated that the127 horns could have fetched nearly pounds 3m on the black market. While Bull's collection came from rhinos slaughtered at least 14 years ago, it is equivalent to about 1 per cent of the world's entire rhino population today.

Their plan began to go wrong when Arscott, using a false name, contacted the Stock Exchange and asked if there was a trade in animal trophies, mentioning rhino horns. An exchange employee contacted the RSPCA, one of whose investigators then pretended to be a prospective buyer. He joined forces with the police's South East Regional Crime Squad in an elaborate operation. There were taped phone calls, meetings in a Cambridge hotel and, finally, the arrest of a the gang at a house in west London.

Yesterday at King's Lynn Crown Court Eley, 54, of Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire, was jailed for nine months while Scotchford-Hughes, aged 50, from Willingham, Cambridgeshire, was ordered to pay pounds 700 costs and given 120 hours of community service. Arscott, aged 40, also of Great Shelford, will be sentenced in two weeks.