TV producer ‘tried to hire a hitman to murder his partner on cancer ward’
A TV producer asked a ‘hitman’ to kill his partner while she was in hospital for a cancer operation, a court heard yesterday.
David Harris, 68, allegedly offered mechanic Chris May £250,000 to carry out the murder, saying: ‘I need to get this done, the sooner the better.’
Harris is said to have wanted his longterm partner Hazel Allinson out of the way so he could run off with his young vice girl lover. The potential assassin was one of three men contacted by Harris – a producer on TV drama The Bill – who wanted to inherit his wealthy partner’s assets including her £800,000 home.
Yesterday, jurors at the Old Bailey listened to a conversation between Harris and Mr May which was secretly recorded on the mechanic’s mobile phone during a clandestine meeting in a car.
Miss Allinson, 68, sat in the public gallery as she heard her partner apparently say he would not be able to ‘sleep in peace’ until she had been murdered.
In the recording, Harris asks if she could be killed while she was in St Richard’s Hospital, Chichester, saying: ‘I don’t know whether that’s the best option for you – I don’t know how you get in through locked doors’. He adds: ‘She is going in. Her mother and her sister died last year of ovarian cancer so she is going in to have her ovaries out.’
He mentioned her having ‘five or six weeks convalescing’ and says: ‘I don’t know if anything can be done then.’
Wearing a checked shirt and cardigan, Harris sat calmly making notes in the dock as the case against him was outlined yesterday. Jurors heard how Miss Allinson moved with him to the historic village of Amberley in West Sussex – but while she had a healthy pension and held roles including parish councillor and church choir singer, Harris relied on an allowance from her.
It failed to provide enough to pay for the jewellery, gifts and London hotel stays he lavished on Ugne Cekaviciute, who he had met in a brothel.
After his credit cards were overspent and he had pawned Miss Allinson’s belongings, Harris decided to have her killed so he could inherit her house, it is claimed.
Prosecutor William Boyce QC said in February last year Harris asked a manager involved with a tyre garage in Kingston, Surrey, to put him in touch with someone who could help him recover a debt. He then arranged to meet Mr May, and they sat in the retired TV producer’s Saab outside the tyre garage.
Mr May claimed he was playing along when Harris repeatedly asked him to ‘murder my wife’ – ‘as soon as possible’.
The mechanic, who is also a trainee private investigator, said he was given a long list of times and locations for the ‘hit’ – including outside the 12th century village church where Miss Allinson sang in the choir and the hospital.
He told the court: ‘It wasn’t about a debt. It was something more serious. He offered me £250,000 to kill his wife.
‘He gave me three pieces of paper – a picture of his wife, quite an elderly lady, a picture of their Saab convertible with a number plate beginning HAZ, and a timetable of dates and places.’
At one stage, he claimed, Harris said: ‘Can you do it tomorrow?’ Mr May said they met again the following day when he recorded the conversation to gather more information to warn Miss Allinson, although he did not want to involve the police.
The mechanic said he was told Miss Allinson would be at a gym in Chichester the next night until 8.45pm, before emerging into a ‘big car park – it’s dark’. Harris said on the tape: ‘I want to get this done, and the sooner the better.’
He then told Mr May he wanted ‘it’ done ‘So I can sleep in peace’, adding that if all went to plan, ‘This time next week I could be sitting pretty and so could you’.
Mr May claimed negotiations eventually tailed off. He said he went to the gym to warn Miss Allinson, but she drove off too quickly.
He then sent her anonymous emails, with one saying ‘Your husband is having an affair but there’s more to it – we need to meet.’ But Miss Allinson wrote back saying she found his contact unnerving, adding ‘this is not your business’. Harris is accused of asking two other men to carry out the killing. The second, Duke Dean, said Harris told him ‘he had a missus and wanted to get rid of’. But he went to the police – who sent undercover officer ‘Chris’ to meet Harris.
They met in the officer’s car, which was fitted with a recording device.
When the retired TV executive was arrested in bed with his prostitute girlfriend in November last year he claimed his alleged attempts to contact hitmen had simply been ‘research’ for a novel about an unhappily married man in love with a younger woman.
Harris denies three charges of soliciting for murder.
The trial continues.
‘Can you do it tomorrow?’