Ex-TV boss ‘told a hitman to kill wife after cancer op’
A PENSIONER asked a “hitman” to kill his wealthy partner as she recovered from a cancer operation, a court heard yesterday.
David Harris, 68, allegedly offered Christopher May £250,000 to murder former TV scriptwriter Hazel Allinson so he could inherit her estate and run off with his younger lover.
Ms Allinson, 69, watched from the public gallery yesterday as a secret recording of Harris discussing his plot with May was played to the jury.
He raised the possibility of the scriptwriter, who previously worked on The Bill, being killed in St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester, West Sussex, saying: “I need to get this done, the sooner the better.
“She has these blood tests on the 26th (of February) and that’s the day she is in St Richard’s Hospital,” Harris was heard saying.
“I don’t know whether that still seems to be the best option for you?
“She is going in. Her mother and her sister died last year of ovarian cancer so she is going to have her ovaries out.”
Conspiring
The Old Bailey heard Ms Allinson would then be recovering from the operation at home, and Harris said, “I don’t know if anything can be done” after raising the issue of “security on the wards”. He later asked: “What sort of guarantees are there it will work in the hospital?”
Mr May, who was initially arrested for conspiring with Harris but later released without charge, said he believed Harris was giving him the information because “any opportunity, he wanted her dead”.
It is claimed Harris wanted to sell the couple’s £800,000 home in Amberley, West Sussex, after the murder and run off with girlfriend Ugne Cekaviciute, 28, who he met in a brothel. The jury heard he showered her with gifts, flowers, dinners, underwear and they had trysts in hotels.
Car mechanic Mr May told the jury he was put in contact with Harris to help with what he said was “debt collection” and felt numb after the retired TV producer said he wanted him to kill his partner.
Mr May said he had no intention of killing Ms Allinson, claiming he played along to prevent someone else being hired to kill her.
“It’s a lot of money and I didn’t think it would be long before he found someone who would actually do it,” he said. Asked by prosecutor William Boyce QC if he believed Harris was serious, the witness said: “Yes.” On February 28 last year Harris told Mr May when she was leaving the village’s St Michael’s Church.
“He expected her to die that day on the route from the church to her house,” said Mr May.
When she returned home, Harris sent the message: “She’s back. What the **** happened. She’s dog walking this afternoon. Where are you?”
Mr May tracked Ms Allinson down online to warn her.
She refused to meet him but he wrote in an email: “Have faith. There are good people in the world. We need to meet. Your husband is having an affair, but there’s more to it than that. I have evidence of this.”
She replied: “This is not your business. I do not need your information. I am blocking your emails.”
The court heard that the meetings, text messages and phone calls between Harris and Mr May continued throughout February and March.
Harris then contacted Duke Dean to “do a hit” in October 2016 and offered up to £175,000. But Mr Dean immediately set up a meeting between them and an undercover police officer, “Chris”, in a bugged car in Balham, south-west London.
Harris was arrested in November while in a hotel with his girlfriend.
He denies three charges of soliciting to murder and claims that he was researching a storyline for a book.
The trial continues.