Gay ‘mercy killing’ presenter Ray Gosling released on bail
Gay BBC presenter Ray Gosling has been released on police bail.
Mr Gosling, 70, was arrested yesterday morning by Nottinghamshire police on suspicion of murder after claiming to have killed a former partner who was dying of AIDS.
This afternoon, his solicitor said he had been released after being questioned five times over the confession, which he made on a BBC programme on Monday.
His home was searched by police but he has not been charged. He has refused to name the man or divulge when and where the alleged killing took place.
Mr Gosling’s solicitor Digby Jones said that police would continue their investigation by looking at documents, interviewing Mr Gosling’s friends and searching properties.
Mr Gosling made the confession in the BBC’s Inside Out programme which was aired on Monday night.
He said on the programme: “I killed someone once… He’d been my lover and he got AIDS.”
“I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead… I have no regrets. I did the right thing.”
The veteran presenter said earlier this week that he would not name the man he claimed to have killed, “even under torture”.
He claimed that a doctor had given tacit approval of the killing and that he and the man, who he referred to as a “bit on the side” had agreed a pact.
There have been some doubts over his story and queries as why he has now chosen to publicise it.
Mr Gosling has said he is not a campaigner for legalised euthanasia. He is known to have nursed his long-term partner Bryn Allsop until his natural death from cancer in 1999.
Paul Watson, a documentary maker who knows Mr Gosling, told the Guardian: “I would question it. I think it is desperate seeking of attention. He is a lovely man, but he does know how to manipulate the media.”
But another friend, Alan Horsfall, of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, said he believed Mr Gosling’s story.
He said: “He told me about it a long time ago. 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.”
