Charmer does a runner
Elderly Romeo fails to appear in court to face three charges of dishonesty.
He was the charming gentleman friend on hand to do the odd job around the house and be good company for a lonely older woman.
But police allege it was all a charade and claim 77-year-old William Harding was intent on worming his way into the homes, lives and wallets of women, leaving a string of them broken-hearted and out of pocket.
Now he is on the run from police, for the second time this year, after failing to appear in the Whanganui District Court on two charges of deception and one charge of causing loss by deception.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges at a court appearance in June and was remanded on bail to reappear in court on August 9. But he failed to appear and was not at his bail address.
Sergeant Nick Brunger, of Whanganui police, said, despite appeals to the public for sightings this week, the elderly man remained at large.
The Herald on Sunday has spoken to relatives of two alleged victims — including one who’d been left heartbroken when the “lovely man” she’d planned to marry left her, in February, without a word of warning.
A Whanganui woman said her 73-year-old mother met Harding in 2014. They got engaged and he moved into the family home in 2015.
The daughter said friends and extended family thought of him as a warm, charming man — until he disappeared.
“He had purchased a house and the day the deposit was due he left,” she alleges.
“He told us he was going to the dairy and never returned.”
She claimed, despite her mother having no money to buy another house, she was talked into co-signing the contract with Harding.
When Harding vanished her mother had to pay almost $8000 to the vendors and in lawyers’ fees, she claimed.
“It’s absolutely devastating; I think it’s like a grieving process because we really did love the guy.”
It is also alleged Harding made his way into the life of another elderly Whanganui woman, who is in her 80s and battling the early stages of dementia.
Her granddaughter said the family thought nothing of the gentleman friend their nana had doing “odd jobs” around the house.
When family moved their grandmother into care they discovered “multiple cash withdrawals all over town, every single day, pretty much”.
She believed about $30,000 had gone.
“We can’t prove that it wasn’t a gift, because, at the time, she was of ‘sound mind’ even though the withdrawals were from all around town at times when she’d be home.”
Her nana, though agitated and confused was unwilling to hear a bad word about the man she’d come to think of as a friend.