On the maths alone, the trial seemed stacked against Dave Lee Travis: 14 charges and 11 women who alleged they had been indecently assaulted by the former BBC Radio 1 DJ over the space of 30 years.
In most cases, the accusers had first made their allegation at the time of the alleged incident to someone who – crucially – backed their story as witnesses in court.
The pattern of incidents, too, could have lent credibility to the prosecution case. The allegations were similar in nature: hands up skirts, breast and bottom gropes, and lingering bear hugs.
But after four weeks of evidence and 21 hours and 50 minutes of deliberations, the eight women and four men on the jury cleared Travis of 12 counts of indecent assault. They were undecided on two other counts.
Throughout his four days in the witness box at London's Southwark crown court, the veteran broadcaster conceded that his tactile habits could be misinterpreted in the modern era, but insisted he would never have acted in an inappropriate way.
He played pranks on his fellow DJs – setting fire to scripts on air, throwing sugar lumps across the studio and placing glasses of water on top of doors – but would never have invaded a colleague's personal space, he said.
"You just don't take chances like that," he said, adding that he would have been "hauled up before the big bosses" if he had jiggled the breasts of a presenter announcing Woman's Hour live on Radio 4, as she alleged.
Another alleged victim's claim was "insanity", he said, because he would be "really asking for trouble" if he had groped a student in his American-style Winnebago while her friends waited outside.
He dismissed allegations that he told a 15-year-old girl that she had the "biggest boobs he had ever seen" at a Showaddywaddy gig in June 1978, saying: "I've never said that to any female … because for a fact it's not true actually."
As he was led through each charge on the indictment by Moore, Travis rubbished them as "made up", "outright lies" or the fantasy of women with little grasp on reality. And the jury clearly believed him.
But there were other signs that the wheels were coming off the prosecution case.
Halfway through the trial, a member of the public contacted the DJ's legal team after reading about the claims in the Sun.
He told them he had an amateur video, filmed at the opening of a hospital radio station where Travis was alleged to have sexually assaulted a carnival princess while they were alone, touring the wards.
The video was crucial, Travis's barrister Stephen Vullo said, because it suggested that at no time was Travis away from his wife, Marianne, and therefore he could not possibly have molested the girl.
In a separate blow to the prosecution, Travis's lawyers were allowed by the judge, Anthony Leonard, to tell the jury that one of the alleged victims had served jail time in 2010, in what they said was evidence of her unreliability as a witness.
The woman, a former BBC runner who said she had been groped by Travis in his Radio 1 studio, had pleaded guilty to threatening to kill her former business partner and attending her property with a knife to slash her tyres. She was jailed after breaching her bail conditions, the jury were told.
Whatever the jury thought of the prosecution witnesses, Travis's former colleagues gave glowing character testimonies.
A stream of ex-PAs, producers and even a Pan's People pin-up, Patricia "Dee Dee" Wilde, trooped into Southwark crown court in London to defend the elder statesman of pop.
Caroline Bondfield, a former personal assistant at the Bedfordshire-based Chiltern Radio, said it was "totally ludicrous" to think Travis had indecently assaulted at least two women at the station in an 18-month period.
Bondfield, a veteran of the station, told the jury: "When you have worked every day with someone you do pick up things. There was never any hint of anything untoward at the station and I would have picked up on it if there was."
Her testimony was in marked contrast to the three Chiltern FM journalists who had earlier told the trial that Travis targeted them constantly with inappropriate touching. "Whenever he would walk into the room we would look down praying it wouldn't be us," said one of the women, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Only the eight women and four men who sat through the four-week trial will know the full reasons why they chose to clear Travis.
The acquittal will raise further questions for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) a week after a jury decided to clear the Coronation Street actor William Roache of sex charges at Preston crown court.
Two Operation Yewtree detectives refused to talk to the media as they hurried out of the courtroom on Thursday, past Travis's wife and two of his former personal assistants.
This was the first Operation Yewtree trial to get a full hearing in a court of law, and the unhappy experience of the CPS will bring extra scrutiny of the cases that follow this year.
For Travis, the acquittal will bring little comfort. At 68, the former star of Radio 1 has already had to move out of the small farm he shared with his wife of 43 years, Marianne, to pay the legal bills.
He struggles with knee and back problems and his wife is recovering from breast cancer. As he told detectives after his arrest, the claims have left him ill, stressed and liable to cry at night.
He now faces the prospect of a retrial on the two indecent assault charges that the jury could not agree on. He has been released on police bail to return to Southwark crown court, when the possibility of future legal proceedings is likely to be decided.
Professionally, the trial is a cruel end to a distinguished five-decade broadcasting career. Little more than three years ago, Travis celebrated achieving a lifetime's ambition when he was inducted into radio's hall of fame. Now the star has been left to piece together what is left of his twilight years.