Star known as Britain’s Bardot ‘was conned into signing away £1m estate’
AN ACTRESS known as ‘Britain’s answer to Brigitte Bardot’ was targeted by two conmen who tried to steal her £1million estate, a court has heard.
Claire Gordon, who starred in a string of saucy 60s comedies, signed over everything she owned in a new will less than six months before her death aged 74.
The beneficiaries were her friend and property advisor Iain MacMaster, 70, and businessman Morris Benhamu, 42.
The pair are accused of falsely pretending Mrs Gordon was in ‘a fit and proper state’ to sign the crucial paperwork.
They allegedly tried to steal the contents of her bank accounts as well as shares, bonds and properties in Wiltshire and Egypt. Yesterday, MacMaster and Benhamu went on trial accused of conspiring to defraud the retired star out of £904,839.
MacMaster collected the alleged victim from hospital after she had knee surgery in October 2014 and was named as her next of kin, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Mark Halsey told the jury this was ‘something he used to his advantage’ and he then ‘composed a false will’.
He said the pair ‘falsely represented’ that she ‘genuinely intended to bequeath the whole of her estate’ to them.
Earlier that year, Mrs Gordon, who did not have children of her own, sent emails to ‘significant relatives’ discussing ‘leaving money in her estate’.
But after her death in April 2015, all of her extended family were surprised to discover they would not benefit from her estate. This included a cottage near the giraffe enclosure at Longleat Safari Park in the Wiltshire countryside and a holiday home in the Egyptian beach resort Hurghada.
Mr Halsey read out a letter from Mrs Gordon’s mother, Mimi, in which she said there was a will written with her solicitor ‘ making her cousins beneficiaries’.
Writing to her brother in 1966, it said: ‘In case I forget to tell you, Claire has made a will with Peter Levett making her cousins beneficiaries.’ The jury heard highlights of Mrs Gordon’s colourful career after she was spotted by a photographer aged 16 and signed up for a life in showbusiness.
She appeared in the West End debut of The Darling Buds Of May and played a blonde film starlet with Bob Monkhouse in Come Blow Your Horn.
Mr Halsey told the jury she appeared in The Three Musketeers, a 1966 musical which gave her the claim to fame of being the first British actress to appear fully naked on stage.
It was produced by her husband, William Donaldson, who is perhaps better known as Henry Root, author of a collection of spoof letters to wellknown figures.
Mrs Gordon also appeared in a string of cult films. These included the 1959 drama Beat Girl in which she was billed as ‘Britain’s answer to Brigitte Bardot’.
MacMaster, of Westminster, central London, and Benhamu, of Hendon, North London, deny conspiracy to defraud and fraud by false representation.
The hearing was adjourned until Thursday.
‘He composed a false will’