A London mechanic, whom a former TV location manager allegedly tried to hire to kill his partner of 30 years, has told a jury how he attempted to warn the intended victim, but she blocked his emails.
David Harris, 68, is accused of offering three men up to £250,000 to murder Hazel Allinson, a former TV scriptwriter, so that he could get his hands on assets including the £800,000 home he shared with her in Amberley, a village near Arundel in West Sussex. The prosecution alleges that he wanted her dead so that he could inherit her estate and run off with his younger lover.
Harris contacted Christopher May, a mechanic who was training to be a private investigator, after being put in touch by a workmate of May’s, the Old Bailey heard. Harris initially said he wanted someone to recover a debt, but then offered him £250,000 to kill his wife, May told the court.
May said he was “numb”, “shocked” and “quite scared”, and at first thought it was a joke by his workmate. When he realised Harris was serious, he decided to “play along” to try to get information to warn Allinson, who had worked with Harris on the TV series The Bill, and also to prevent Harris from hiring somebody else who might do carry out the request.
May said Harris gave him a timetable of Allinson’s movements, describing a health club “with a big car park that’s dark”, her local church and a planned hospital appointment. He said he travelled to the health club to try to warn her and to play her a secret recording he had made of Harris discussing the plan with him, he told the court.
He saw her get into her car, but she drove off before he could speak to her, he said. He later contacted her by email, using a false address, saying he had “delicate” information about her “husband” .
Allinson replied: “This is not your business. I do not need your information. I am blocking your emails,” she told Harris, the jury heard.
Harris denies three charges of soliciting to murder Allinson in 2016. It is alleged that he had run up large debts by showering gifts, including jewellery, on his lover Ugne Cekaviciute, who he said he had met in a brothel.
The jury was played the recording secretly taped by May in which Harris tells him: “Whatever happens, it will look like an accident or a mugging gone wrong … This time next week, I could be sitting pretty and so could you.”
On the tape, Harris tells May about a hospital appointment Allinson had, and questions whether that would be an option. “She’s going in. Her mother and sister died last year of ovarian cancer last year so she’s going in to have her ovaries out,” he says.
Days later, it was alleged, Harris texted May that Allinson was at her local church on the morning of 28 February. May said he promised that he would go to the church, but did not do so. Shortly afterwards May received a text from Harris which read: “She’s back. What the fuck happened? She’s going dog-walking this afternoon. Where are you?”
Prosecuting, William Boyce QC asked May: “He was expecting his wife to be murdered by you shortly after 10.38am on February 28 as she walked home from church?” May replied, “Yes.”
May, who was initially arrested on suspicion of involvement in the alleged plot before being released and treated as a witness, said he had never had any intention of killing Allinson and took no money from Harris at any stage. He said Harris became increasingly abrupt “because things had been dragging on for a while with no results”.
Harris told him that he was worried about the anonymous email sent to his wife, said May. He said he told Harris he didn’t want anything more to do with it. He received a last communication from Harris in March 2016 saying he had “sorted things out with his wife.”
May told the court he did not go to police “because if he got away with it, he was offering a lot of money for someone to kill his wife, and I didn’t want to be a name on that list.”
Harris is also accused of approaching a second man to carry out the killing. This man alerted police, who brought in an undercover detective to pose as “Chris” , a third killer for hire.
The court has heard that after Harris’s arrest in November 2016, he denied hiring the men to kill his partner, claiming that he was researching a thriller novel he planned to write to make money.
The case continues.
