My life sentence of grief
First interview with widow of hero PC Andrew Harper
APOLICE officer at your door at 3am is rarely good news. When your husband is a policeman himself, and you have signed up to a life of kissing him goodbye each day, quelling the anxious voice in your head as you dash off a late-night ‘Love you’ text, or a sleepy, dawn ‘ See you later’ as he heads off for a shift, that stranger in uniform is your worst nightmare.
Exactly a year ago Lissie Harper, a beautiful young newlywed — who was still awaiting her wedding video, who’d yet to go on honeymoon and whose ring still felt heavy, new and shiny on her finger — was woken in the early hours by a loud knock on her front door.
Befuddled with sleep, she opened the door and invited the officer in. ‘He said there’d been a road traffic collision and, as we sat down, I asked if Andrew was OK. He said: “Andrew has died”.
‘I remember saying: “Are you sure? But we just got married”. I realise that didn’t make sense but somehow, in my head, it made what he was telling me impossible to believe.’
But of course, it did make sense. Lissie, now 29, and Andrew, 28, had been married for just four weeks. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Her husband, PC Andrew Harper, a Thames Valley police officer, based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, was killed in the most barbaric way imaginable — dragged by a speeding getaway car for more than a mile on country roads, until his body was so battered it was no longer recognisable as human.
So horrific was the crime that many tears have been shed for the brave young officer, even by those of us who never knew him.
A national outcry followed the ‘not guilty to murder’ verdicts — celebrated with whoops, cheers and pats on the back by his feral killers from the travelling community — as well as the shorter sentences handed down to them for the lesser crime of manslaughter.
To mark the first anniversary of Andrew’s death today, and to launch her campaign for Harper’s Law, which would mean an automatic life sentence for anyone who kills a police officer or other on-duty emergency services worker, Lissie is speaking for the first time and exclusively to the Mail about the horror and heartache she has endured.
In the first of two emotional accounts, she talks of the huge vacuum left by her 6ft 5in, ‘funny, goofy, kind-natured and nurturing’ husband, her childhood sweetheart and the love of her life.
She also speaks of her steely determination to amend the law that means his killers will be eligible for parole in only a few years.
‘In killing Andrew, a good, hardworking, honest, loving man, they have taken a life that was so precious and subjected me to a life sentence without him,’ she says.
‘For this to be allowed to happen it’s clear that our justice system, supposedly designed to protect us all and which Andrew devoted his life to defending until the very end, is broken.’ Yesterday there were memorial services taking place
In her first shattering interview, one year after her hero PC husband was dragged to his death by teenage thugs, Andrew Harper’s widow Lissie shares her heartbreaking photo album and rages...
across the Berkshire force area, to mark the anniversary of his death. A wreath was laid and a minute’s silence observed.
Andrew had wanted to be a policeman for as long as Lissie had known him and joined aged 19.
He had all the right qualities, she says. ‘He was clever and always very proactive and protective, as well as compassionate. He liked to help people. He also had a strong sense of right and wrong.’
Tall, dark and handsome to boot, to Lissie he was perfect — and she had no doubt at all that he was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. ‘Andrew and I grew up together so, losing him, I feel I’ve lost a whole part of myself.
‘I miss everything about him — the hugs, the kisses, him coming in and scooping me up, giving me love. It’s crippling. We had a honeymoon booked in the Maldives in September, which I had to cancel, and were planning on trying for a baby when we got back.
‘Andrew would have been a great dad and having a family with him is one of the many things his killers have taken from me.’
The raw hurt Lissie still feels over all that she lost is distressing to witness. A tiny, fragile young woman — just 5ft 3in and a childlike size 6 — you almost want to scoop her up and protect her from any more pain, just like her loving bear of a husband would have done. ‘When I first learned how Andrew had died, all I could think was: “I’m not strong enough to deal with this”,’ she says, her eyes filling with tears. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth.
Lissie’s apparent fragility belies an inner steel which has provided her with the remarkable strength to first present the eulogy at her beloved husband’s funeral at Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral and later to read statements to the world’s media this past year.
To the horrified public who had followed details of the case, this quiet, dignified young widow seemed the very antithesis of the lawless, morally-devoid killers who sneered and jeered their way through court proceedings.
Henry Long, 19 — the ringleader who was driving the Seat Toledo, seen deliberately swerving into verges as he dragged Andrew’s body along the road — was sentenced to 16 years in prison after admitting manslaughter.
His friends Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, both 18, were each sentenced to 13 years for manslaughter, which they will serve initially in a young offenders’ institute. All were
He gave me a card saying ‘Life is slippery ...take me by the hand’
Losing him, I feel I have lost a part of myself
I miss everything about Andrew — it’s crippling
I sat by his closed coffin and told him I love him
found not guilty of murder despite widespread incredulity as to how any driver or passenger could not know the car they were in was pulling a man behind it — as the three claimed in their defence.
If they behave themselves in jail they may serve no more than half of these sentences, before being granted parole — a prospect which fills Lissie with dread.
‘It won’t be long before they’re out and they’ll still be young,’ she says. ‘They will be able to get on with their lives — a privilege they have taken away from Andrew.
‘The type of lives that they were living, committing crime and giving nothing back to society, was detrimental to everyone, and I’ve no doubt in my mind that when they are released they will go straight back to that lifestyle.’
Lissie last spoke to Andrew at 10pm on the night he died, having been asleep when he left for work at 6am. She’d been delighted when he said they should spend some money having a website put together as a shop window for her online design business, seeing it as further evidence of his faith in, and support for, her.
She fell asleep soon afterwards only to be woken a few hours later by that fateful knock on the front door. ‘ At first I thought it was Andrew, that maybe I’d locked him out or something, which has happened before.
‘When I looked out of the window, I saw a man in a police uniform, and I thought maybe Andrew had come back with someone . . . that maybe he was there.’
When told the terrible news, Lissie remembers starting to hyperventilate and, fearing she was going to be sick, ran upstairs to the bathroom where she lay on the floor, sobbing into a towel.
Taking deep breaths now before she can continue, she adds: ‘ The police officer came upstairs to check I was OK and I remember thinking, “He’s got a job to do, he needs to know I’m OK, so I’d better go downstairs”.’
The officer called her parents and as they were waiting for them to arrive, he told Lissie: ‘Ten people have been taken into custody.’ ‘I was very confused because, until then, I’d just assumed Andrew had been involved in a car accident on his way home,’ says Lissie.
‘I said: “What do you mean? It’s not murder though is it?” And he said: “Yes, we think it was”. That made me even more distraught — it wasn’t an accident, somebody had taken Andrew’s life.’ They had, in terrible circumstances.
At around 10.30pm on August 15, 2019 — more than four hours after his shift should have ended — PC Harper and a colleague responded to a request over their police radio to go to Stanford Dingley in Berkshire where a group of youths had been reported stealing a quad bike.
Working late, to see the job through, was just typical of Andrew, says Lissie and happened a lot.
‘He wouldn’t have just palmed off on the next shift without doing his part,’ she says.
As he attempted to apprehend the thieves, Andrew unwittingly stepped, with both feet, into the loop of a tow-rope attached to the back of the criminals’ car, and as they sped off, was lassoed by his feet. He was pulled for more than a mile, and swung from side to side like a pendulum, along country lanes towards the A4 before eventually coming free.
His distressed colleague, who chased after the vehicle in their unmarked BMW — spotting PC Harper’s belongings, including his stab vest, en route — found him dead in the road having suffered ‘catastrophic injuries’.
While Lissie’s family did their best to shield her from the horrific details of how Andrew died, she was told that she could not see his body. It was said to be so badly mutilated that one witness mistook it for a deer.
‘Not seeing Andrew’s body after he died has made it even harder for me to believe that he’s gone,’ says Lissie. ‘But I sat beside his closed coffin in the chapel of rest and told him that I loved him, that everything would be OK, and one day we’d be together again.
‘I asked if I could have his wedding ring because I wanted to wear it on a chain around my neck, but they couldn’t find it.’
To make up for it, her sister Kate, 31, had a heart charm on a gold bracelet engraved with ‘I Love you Lissie’ in Andrew’s handwriting which was copied from the notes he wrote for his wedding speech, delivered just a month earlier, on July 18. The couple exchanged