My dad’s shot me
Heartbreaking last words of daughter blasted to death in car park beside her mother by her bullying father ... who then turned gun on himself
A DAUGHTER gunned down in a car park by her bullying father said as she lay dying: ‘My dad’s shot me.’
Charlotte Hart was blasted at close range by ‘vindictive’ father Lance – who also killed her mother Claire before turning the weapon on himself.
He left a 12-page hate-filled suicide note saying ‘revenge is a dish served cold’, an inquest heard yesterday.
Hart had lain in wait for Charlotte, 19, and 50-year-old wife, who had left him four days earlier after 26 years of marriage.
As the women returned to their vehicle in a swimming pool car park in July, the 57-year-old opened fire with a single-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, re-loading it between rounds.
Charlotte, who lay bleeding from gunshot wounds to the stomach, said in her heartbreaking last words: ‘It was my dad who shot me’. Minutes later she was dead.
Police called to the scene in Spalding, Lincolnshire, found a suicide note in the killer’s car in which he talked of revenge and enjoying his ‘last supper’ before carrying out the shooting.
The inquest in Boston heard how Hart, who is survived by sons, Luke, 26 and Ryan, 25, wrote in a letter found on a memory stick: ‘I have just had my favourite meal, paella, and I’m sitting in the sun with a lovely glass of red wine.
‘That was my last supper, I hope you enjoyed yours.
‘I’m completely screwed. I had to do this. You destroyed my life without giving me a chance.
‘Revenge is a dish served cold. Karma is a bitch.’
He added: ‘My feelings inside are as if my whole family and dogs have been in a car crash and died. Who caused the crash? I want revenge too.’ Hart, who worked for a builders’ merchant, also claimed his family had ‘conspired against me’ and accused Charlotte of ‘plotting against me’.
‘Karma is coming’, Hart wrote. ‘Ryan and Charlotte, karma is a bitch isn’t it? Now look at what’s happened.’ The inquest heard how Mrs Hart told colleagues about leaving the family home in the village of Moulton the month after her 26th wedding anniversary. The mother of three, who had received treatment for cancer and been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, confided that Hart was ‘controlling and selfish’, telling workmates: ‘I’ve become worn out by his behaviour.’
She told another colleague that the 20 emails she received from her husband after she left him were the most he had said to her in two decades. Friends also described Hart as a vindictive bully who was obsessed with money.
Police said he distrusted banks and withdrew the family’s £30,000 savings and stored it in safes at their home.
Days before her death, Mrs Hart secretly moved to a rented house with the help of her sons. She was joined by Charlotte, who was due to start a teacher-training course at Northampton University this year and had described her mother as ‘my best friend’.
On the day of the shootings, the estranged couple had agreed to meet outside the leisure complex where Mrs Hart regularly swam, in order to exchange belongings.
Witness Tony Buckman described seeing Hart holding a gun, and how he seemed ‘pumped’. ‘I heard shots’, he told the inquest.
‘I looked across to the swimming pool car park and saw a man standing next to a car holding a shotgun which was cocked. He was loading two cartridges. ‘I saw a lady walking from a light blue car towards where the man was. ‘She had her hands raised up and was holding her palms open. He pointed it at waist height and fired it at her. She fell to her knees.
‘The man seemed pumped and ready to do whatever it was he was going to do next.’
Sports centre duty manager Alex Marchant heard shots and recognised Charlotte, who regularly attended the pool with her mother. As she lay on the floor he went over to comfort her and give her water and she told him: ‘It was my dad who shot me.’
Analyses of Hart’s laptop revealed he’d searched Google with the phrases ‘hearing voices telling me to do bad things’ and ‘husbands killing wives UK’.
But the inquest heard that although Hart had suffered from anxiety and depression since 1986, he had never been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness or seemed suicidal. South Lincolnshire coroner Paul Cooper said there was ‘nothing to suggest Hart was not in full control of his faculties’.
Recording a verdict of unlawful killing and suicide, he described Hart as a ‘cold, calculating and scheming man’. He added: ‘If he had lived he would have been charged with murder.
Mr Cooper added: ‘He acquired the shotgun and had sawn off that shotgun to cause maximum damage. He knew exactly what he was going to do.’
Hart’s sons, who did not attend the inquest, said in a statement afterwards: ‘Charlotte and our mum were our inspiration and our purpose in life.
‘It is not possible to describe how unfairly and how cruelly they have been taken from us.’
‘Revenge is a dish served cold’