TV boss ‘longed to push rich partner off cliff every day’
A TELEVISION producer told an undercover policeman he had contemplated pushing his girlfriend off a cliff so he could live with his mistress, a court heard yesterday.
David Harris, 68, was allegedly willing to pay the man – who he thought was an assassin for hire – £200,000 to kill The Bill scriptwriter Hazel Allinson.
Harris, who had worked with Mrs Allin- son, 68, on the crime drama, was recorded telling the officer he spent ‘18 years on a TV show called The Bill, so I know how the police work’, adding: ‘An accident is quite complicated to set up, I know it is because I used to set up stunts for movies.’
The officer, identified only as ‘Chris’, met Harris in a Sainsbury’s car park in Wandsworth, South London, last November, the Old Bailey heard. Harris frisked him, asking: ‘You’re not wired are you?’
The defendant then got into the officer’s car – where a camera and microphone captured every word. On the recording, Chris asked Harris what his ‘problem’ was, and Harris replied: ‘My wife. I would like something – some kind of accident.’
Asked what sort of accident, Harris suggested a ‘car-jacking’ or ‘mugging gone wrong’, saying: ‘I guess as serious as it can get… What happens, it’s got to be fatal.
‘Better sooner than later. We were down in the south of France a month ago, and every day I was waking up thinking, “Is this the day I can get her close enough to the edge to bump into her?”’
Chris asked: ‘What, were you up on the cliffs?’ The defendant replied: ‘Yeah.’
Talking of the plan, Harris said: ‘It’s not something I do normally – it’s just I’ve got into a situation where there’s no way out.’
The jury has previously heard Harris had approached two ‘hitmen’ – Christopher May, who tried to warn Mrs Allinson, and Duke Dean, who told police. Mr Dean then introduced Harris to Chris.
The court heard Harris, who lived with Mrs Allinson in Amberley, West Sussex, wanted his partner’s money so he could
‘I know how to show the grief required’
live with 28-year- old Lithuanian Ugne Cekaviciute, whom he met in a brothel.
He told Chris he had been with his mistress for five years, and wanted to spend the rest of his life by the sea with her. He said of Mrs Allinson: ‘She has all the money, she has the purse strings.’
The defendant also assured Chris that his home was secluded, saying: ‘We’re down in West Sussex – it’s dark. There’s no street lights, there are no cameras.’
Harris said he knew he would be a suspect as he was due to inherit her £800,000 home, claiming: ‘I know how to show the grief required – because I would be sad. It would be the saddest day in my life.’
But he added: ‘I’ve never been more deadly serious about anything.’
Harris, who denies three counts of soliciting to murder, then told Chris: ‘I want to live the next five years of my life happily – I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder. You will know where I live. I’m trusting you to get this thing done.’
Days later Harris was arrested in bed with his lover in a South London B&B. He claimed his meetings with ‘hitmen’ were research for a novel.
The trial continues.