A former producer on TV drama The Bill has been jailed for 17 years over a plot to kill his partner. David Harris was convicted for trying to hire three men to murder Hazel Allinson, his partner of 27 years, so could he inherit her fortune, sell her £800,000 home, and live out his days with Lithuanian sex worker Ugne Cekaviciute, 28. The 68-year-old admitted that he had become entangled in a web of lies, and accrued huge debts as he lavished expensive gifts on his lover, but he denied wanting his partner dead, and said he had only talked to hitmen as research for a murder-mystery novel. A jury rejected his explanation, and found him guilty of three counts of soliciting murder.
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David Harris has been sentenced to 17 years in prison
Jurors had heard that Mr Harris had approached two separate men with an offer of £200,000 to kill his partner – with one reporting him to the City of London Police. He was then videoed meeting an undercover officer as part of his continued attempt to have Ms Allinson killed in a "mugging gone wrong".
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At sentencing, Judge Anne Molyneux QC said Mr Harris' obsession with his lover meant he had condemned a women who had "protected and nurtured" him to a painful and terrifying death. She told the defendant: "For your pipe dream, for your obsessive infatuation with a young woman, Ms Allinson, who had protected and nurtured you, was to die a painful and terrifying death in an isolated spot. Her death was to fund your life. You had used her until she had outlasted her usefulness to you. All that you wanted from her was that she should die and you should inherit her money."