Arabian Nightmare

by Helen Chryssides (Author), Richard Arnot (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $14.48

  On 19 May 1979, a British nurse, Helen Smith, and a Dutch tugboat captain, Johannes Otten, fell to their deaths from a balcony at a party given in Jeddah by British surgeon Richard Arnot and his wife Penny. When Helen Smith's father started to investigate what was initially seen as a tragic accident, rumours of sex orgies, conspiracy and murder began to circulate. Taken into custody and eventually sentenced to imprisonment and a public flogging for the local crime of serving alcohol, Richard Arnot was released as the result of intervention by the British government and was deported back to the UK. In the wake of Ron Smith's determined campaign to prove that foul play as associated in his daughter's death, Arnot was hounded by the press and shunned by the medical profession. The 1982 inquest into the death resulted in an open verdict which fostered continuing doubt and speculation about the real story behind the events of the fateful evening. Arnot, who moved to Australia to begin a new life, now tells his own story.