Russian model’s ‘poisoned’ spouse pranked Charles at film premiere
Alex King pretended to be part of The History Boys cast and knew fraudster who stole £4.5million
THE mysterious case of the Russian model who claimed she and her husband were poisoned in a Salisbury restaurant on the orders of Vladimir Putin took an extraordinary twist last night.
The Daily Telegraph can disclose that her 42-year-old husband is a former prankster who once duped the Prince of Wales at a film premiere into believing he was a member of the cast of The History Boys.
Alex King, who has now been released from Salisbury General Hospital, was also previously spokesman and assistant to an aristocratic con man jailed for eight years in 2011 for a £4.5 million fraud.
Mr King’s Russian-born wife Anna Shapiro, a 30-year-old underwear model and businesswoman, gave an interview to a tabloid newspaper yesterday insisting the couple had been targeted by “Putin’s henchmen”.
Mr King collapsed in the lavatory of Prezzo, an Italian restaurant in Salisbury, on Sunday evening. Ms Shapiro was also taken ill close to the spot where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed after being attacked with Novichok nerve agent in March.
The apparent poisoning of Mr King and Ms Shapiro, who describes herself as an opponent of Vladimir Putin, prompted a full-scale emergency on Sunday night. Ambulance crews and police wearing chemical protection suits attended and the restaurant was put into lockdown.
Ms Shapiro told The Sun how “Alex was foaming at the mouth” before being rushed to Salisbury hospital and placed in an induced coma. Ms Shapiro, who was born in Nizhny Novgorod but later took Israeli citizenship, underwent tests and discharged herself a day later on Monday. The newspaper reported she was under 24-hour police protection at a local hotel. She told the The Sun: “I’m sure the Russians think I’m a British spy.”
She said her father also played in a Russian military orchestra and that she had received death threats for denouncing Putin.
The Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism unit, which led the inquiry into the attempted assassination of the Skripals, said yesterday it was not investigating her claims. It has identified two Russian intelligence agents behind the attack on the Skripals and issued warrants for their arrest.
Wiltshire Police issued a statement saying that Mr King’s illness was “not being treated as suspicious” but that inquiries were continuing. A police source said: “The only thing we can say is the majority of the newspaper’s report can be ignored.”
Ms Shapiro said she and Mr King had married a month ago and fled London to Salisbury after receiving death threats. Ms Shapiro, under the name Chana Shapiro, is listed as a director of four businesses, all of them now dissolved. Her social media accounts show her wearing lingerie or swimwear in hundreds of different poses.
The companies are registered to a mansion in central London from which Edward Davenport, self-styled Lord Edward Davenport, was reported to have staged a sex party.
Davenport was sentenced to eight years in jail in 2011 for being the “ringmaster” in a £4.5 million fraud. Mr King, who shared the house in Portland Place with Davenport, was described variously as his spokesman and assistant, although there is no suggestion he was involved in the fraud.
In 2006, Mr King had gatecrashed the film premiere of The History Boys after being challenged by Davenport in a £100,000 wager. Mr King “infiltrated” the cast and was introduced to a “clueless” Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. “I told her how
‘He said he could not remember anything of the last two days. All he said is that he’d had the fish at the restaurant’
lovely she looked. She appeared to be very flattered,” said Mr King.
Mr King’s mother Christine Ainley, 73, who lives in west London, said: “I spoke to doctors and they said he was very ill. They had put him in a coma.”
Mrs Ainley spoke to her son directly yesterday for half an hour after he came out of his coma. “He said he couldn’t remember anything of the last two days. All he said about the restaurant is that he’d had fish,” she said.
Lorna Wilkinson, Director of Nursing at Salisbury District Hospital, said last night: “These two people have now been discharged. While this incident did not involve nerve agents it was still clearly very stressful for our staff who, once again, demonstrated the very best of the NHS.”