Wife, 38, forged £600k will of lollipop man, 85

She said she found it in their loft, hidden in an empty crisp packet

A GOLD-DIGGING wife tried to inherit her late husband’s £600,000 fortune by forging his will and claiming she found it in a packet of Doritos, a court has heard.

Marsha Henderson married lollipop man Newton Davies in 2004, when she was in her 20s and he was 76.

When the former bus conductor died at the age of 85 in 2013, he left Henderson £ 25,000. He left £430,000 to Paulette Davies, his only child from his first marriage, and £140,000 to an old friend.

Unhappy with her share, Henderson claimed she had found a different will in an empty Doritos tortilla chips packet in the attic of her husband’s house in Wembley, Lied: Marsha Henderson North London. But a judge has ruled the document, which would have given her a £550,000 windfall, was an obvious forgery.

Judge Nigel Gerald said the will was riddled with errors and that her story about how she found it was ‘ridiculous’. He accused her of ‘ orchestrating a fraud’ and declared the second will invalid. Mr Davies’ marriage to Henderson, now 38, came ‘like a thunderbolt’ to his family and friends and left them ‘in a state of shock’, court documents state.

After his death, his daughter said he had signed his last will in July 2011, dividing up his mortgage- free £ 500,000 home and £100,000 cash.

But when Henderson was told about the contents of the will in the spring of 2015, she produced a rival document dated November 2011. It left just £20,000 to his daughter, £25,000 to friends, and about £550,000 to his young widow.

Judge Gerald, sitting at the Mayor’s and City of London Court, said: ‘It is Miss Henderson’s evidence that the November 2011 will was found in the loft of the deceased’s house, in a Doritos bag on the floor of the loft, in around March or April 2015. She says she knows nothing about how it came to be written or executed.

All she knows is that it was found in a Doritos bag in the loft of the house in the spring of 2015. There is no doubt, upon the evidence which I have heard, that Miss Henderson... came to court to lie.

‘There is no doubt of any nature whatsoever that the November 2011 will is a simple, but rather poor quality, forgery. There is equally no doubt in my mind that it was forged by Miss Henderson.’

The judge said the most striking error in the forgery was a reference to ‘her last will’, rather than ‘his’. He added: ‘The deceased was a man and not a woman.

‘In the circumstances of this case I do not regard this as a tri- fling or inconsequential defect. It will obviously strike anybody as being somewhat eccentric to put an important document such as a will into a Doritos bag, but there are eccentric people in this world.

‘So that, of itself, does not cause me to be disbelieving, although it does cause me to consider how a man in his early 80s, who according to a friend does not eat Doritos, would put this document into an empty Doritos bag and then put it in the loft.

‘It is inherently unlikely that the deceased would go into the loft in November 2011, find an empty Doritos bag and put his will in it. There is eccentric and there is ridiculous – and this is ridiculous.’

Henderson may now face further legal proceedings from Mr Davies’ daughter for more than £42,000 in rent at her father’s home during the legal dispute.