Hitmen (4 page)

When Colin Harrold finally took the witness stand he insisted he was ‘very much in love’ with his brutally murdered wife. Harrold told the court she was ‘the centre platform of my life’. He added, ‘We were soulmates, very close and intimate.’

Harrold admitted cheating on his wife but insisted he never had full sex with mistress Tania McCarter. He said, ‘I had plenty of sex at home.’

There was a hushed silence at Nottingham Crown Court when the jury returned their verdict on Colin Harrold. Harrold swayed and grasped the bar of the dock as the jury gave a unanimous verdict, finding him not guilty of the murder of his wife.

Less than an hour later, the same trial judge Mr Justice Moreland said Harrold’s best friend Darren Lake’s evidence was ‘probably, essentially truthful’. Moreland told the
31-year
-old former nightclub bouncer: ‘You were the actual
cold-blooded
and merciless planned murderer of a woman who, seconds before you attacked her, was treating you as a friend and with whom you falsely pretended to be friendly. It is however to your credit that you have pleaded guilty and, at risk to your own life, have given evidence for the Crown.’

As Colin Harrold walked free from Nottingham Crown
Court and returned to the same £400,000 house where his wife was murdered, his only words to the waiting packs of journalists were: ‘I am relieved.’

Meanwhile Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Cook, who’d led the investigation, said, ‘We placed the facts and circumstances surrounding the case before the court and now, quite obviously, we must abide by the decision of the jury.’ The jury’s verdict had effectively rejected the prosecution’s case that Colin Harrold wanted Diane dead so he would be free to continue his playboy lifestyle.

Colin Harrold inherited his dead wife’s share of their £400,000 home just one year after her murder. Harrold was also named as chief beneficiary in Diane Harrold’s will which meant he inherited her £30,000 estate, apart from some jewellery, which went to her brother. He also got more than £100,000 in legal aid because on paper he claimed to be virtually penniless at the time of his arrest and subsequent trial. There were also rumours that he’d sold his life story to a national newspaper for £40,000.

On the first anniversary of his wife’s murder, Colin Harrold was to be found hand-in-hand with his so-called ‘former mistress’ Tania McCarter. The couple were photographed frolicking on a beach in Israel. Harrold had been so paranoid about being spotted in the company of Ms McCarter that they’d flown out to Tel Aviv on separate flights from the UK. One former friend said, ‘What they are doing is disgusting. What came out in the trial would have shamed most men into keeping their head down. It’s almost as if he’s dancing on Diane’s grave.’

Meanwhile some of Diane’s relatives spent that same anniversary in Scunthorpe, where they placed flowers on Diane Harrold’s grave. One said, ‘He appears to have chosen to commemorate the anniversary in a slightly different way. The brass neck of the man is incredible.’

After his controversial acquittal, Colin Harrold sold his dead wife’s beauty salon business and also came to an ‘arrangement’ with the Inland Revenue over unpaid taxes. A couple of his few remaining friends even claimed he’d also spent £4,000 on liposuction of his flabby midriff.

Harrold made an appearance on his local radio station to assure people that they should not be scared of him. ‘It’s important that people are aware of what I am about so they are not worried if they pass me in the street.’ During the hour-long interview with a local radio station in Peterborough, he spoke of his ‘shock’ at his arrest. ‘I was inside for 10 months. My grief was day and night all the time I was there. For someone to say this guy doesn’t care about Diane, his wife, is just crazy.’

After hearing Harrold’s interview on the radio, Diane’s brother, Darren Hawley, commented, ‘What he has said is very interesting. I used to believe that Colin Harrold was a nice person, but I don’t think he is fooling anyone any more.’

So Colin Harrold continues to live a life of luxury in the house where his wife was so cruelly bludgeoned to death and then drowned by his best friend. ‘I’ve got absolutely nothing to hide. Why should I leave the area where my family lives? I have done absolutely nothing wrong.’

E
lizabeth Duncan proves that a mother’s love for her son can be so strong that it sparks murder and mayhem. But then Hazel Sinclara Nigh – as she was born in Kansas City in 1904 – was building up to a life of crime and notoriety from the moment she adopted the Christian name Elizabeth and married her first husband Dewey Tessier, when she was just 14 years old.

Elizabeth had three children by him, but they were all soon dispatched to the nearest orphanage because her skills as a mother left a lot to be desired, although the same could not be said of her ability to seduce men. Elizabeth would eventually marry at least a dozen other men. Many of those marriages were bigamous, and most of the bizarre unions were swiftly annulled on the grounds of non-consummation, although Elizabeth was a deft hand at blackmailing her long list of hubbies into making healthy-sized cash support payments.

Elizabeth’s other big speciality was defrauding gullible businessmen by luring them into so-called honeytraps in hotel rooms with young girls and then embarrassing them into making large one-off payments to avoid the local constabulary. Elizabeth was certainly a one-off.

In 1928, she married yet another sucker of a man called Frank Low. Just four months later a boy called Frank Jnr was born. Low died in 1932 – a year earlier Elizabeth had moved on to to another, wealthier bedmate called ‘Mr Duncan’ whom she’d married bigamously before Frank Low’s untimely death. Elizabeth was to use the name Duncan for much of the rest of her life although she also occasionally used the surname ‘Craig’ after another of her marriage partners. That name came in particularly handy during fraudulent financial transactions because Mr Craig had a very good credit rating.

Meanwhile, baby son Frank Jnr became the only consistent presence in Elizabeth’s ever-changing life. She proudly took the infant everywhere with her, even to the brothel she helped run, not to mention numerous bars and clip joints where little Frank often found himself sitting in Elizabeth’s Chevy Rambler automobile sucking on a bottle of soda while his mother went about her business.

It wasn’t long until another husband – a kindly old fellow called George Satriano – came on the scene. He showered Elizabeth with gifts and the couple moved into a huge mansion on the edge of town. Then George began noticing a few discrepancies in his bank account. He withdrew her credit cards and dropped her monthly allowance to a few dollars.

Elizabeth was so outraged she picked up the yellow pages
and found herself a private detective, whom she offered $500 to throw acid in her husband’s face for daring to question her honesty. Fortunately for George, that little plot came to nothing, but few could blame him for filing for divorce. He was so grateful to escape the marriage with most of his fortune still intact that he agreed to give Elizabeth his brand new Cadillac as part of a settlement.

Naturally, Elizabeth had been out looking for a new husband even before her divorce from George Satriano was finalised. She needed funds to put her beloved son Frank through his law studies in San Francisco so she set up a brothel in Santa Barbara, a very civilised beach resort halfway between LA and San Francisco. She called it a massage parlour and persuaded a handsome young stud called Benjamin Cogbill to be her partner in business and in bed.

But Ben couldn’t keep pace with Elizabeth’s frenetic lifestyle and he was soon shown the bedroom door. A swift stroll down the church aisle with 26-year-old Stephen Gillis followed, after Elizabeth promised Gillis $50,000 if he’d marry her. Her latest toyboy just happened to be one of her beloved son Frank’s classmates at law school. Elizabeth insisted the $50,000 was the proceeds of a non-existent trust fund. But the nearest handsome young Stephen got to any of that cash was a cheque for $10,000 which bounced its way out of every bank in the state.

The only fortunate aspect of that wedding for Stephen Gillis was that the marriage wasn’t consummated. He somehow managed to avoid living with the now frumpy, middle-aged and seriously overweight Elizabeth. However, when he asked for a divorce, she accused him of assault, fraud
and blackmail – enough damaging claims to ruin his plans to be a lawyer. Stephen Gillis eventually fled his battles with Elizabeth to join the Marines. She was furious that he’d rather join the toughest training unit in the world than stay with her.

Days after Gillis’s departure, Elizabeth marched into a local doctor’s surgery with a pregnant woman in tow. She introduced the young woman as Mrs Elizabeth Gillis and the doctor confirmed her pregnancy. Gillis was then forced to send baby support money to her before he could finally win an annulment of their marriage. As Gillis later admitted: ‘She had a tremendous spell on everybody that she came in contact with, and no matter what lie she told, no matter how fantastic, it was believeable.’

Back in the rich and glamorous Pacific coastal resort of Santa Barbara, Elizabeth continued running her brothel and supporting her beloved son Frank. Her immaculate dress and good manners gave the impression she was rich. But behind her quaint horn-rimmed glasses those piercing blue eyes and her thin mouth told another, chilling story.

Everything took second place to her beloved son Frank who even admitted to his friends and colleagues that he was ‘the apple of my mother’s eye’. But that bond between mother and son took a disturbing twist after Frank qualified as a lawyer. Elizabeth soon made it her business to be in court whenever Frank was working. She loudly applauded his speeches and even rushed across to hold her son’s hand adoringly whenever there was a break in proceedings. But worse still, Elizabeth would berate the District Attorney if Frank lost a case. None of this helped Frank, especially since
he was already known in local legal circles as the ‘Wicked Wascal Wabbit’ on account of his distinct lisp.

And back at their house in Santa Barbara, Elizabeth and Frank continued to share a bed. One of her oldest friends later recalled, ‘She said that sometimes she’d call to Frankie and that he’d come and jump in bed with her and console her or she’d go and jump in Frankie’s bed.’ Frank later denied that any such activities ever took place but by that time the damage had already been done.

Elizabeth adored taking centre stage at every gathering, especially with her group of elderly friends who seemed in awe of her razor sharp wit and pushy personality. One of her most adoring fans was a stony-faced widow in the first throes of senile dementia called Mrs Emma Short. One day she popped round to Elizabeth’s house and was immediately shown ‘Frankie’s’ bedroom. His mother cooed at her son as he lay asleep, ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ Elizabeth then described him as ‘still Mama’s little boy’. Frank was almost 30 years of age at the time.

Elizabeth Duncan openly admitted that she couldn’t stand the thought that her beloved son might actually leave home one day. Once, when she suspected Frank was about to move into his own apartment, she swallowed back just enough sleeping pills to send out a customary ‘cry for help’ message. When the doctor treating her pointed out that her adult son Frank might one day get married and leave home, she snapped back, ‘Frank would never leave me. He wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t dare get married.’ A few weeks later she told one friend that if Frank ever contemplated marrying, she would ‘get rid of her’. That icy threat sent a shiver up her friend’s spine.

In November 1957 Frank even dared stand up to his mother by insisting she could not afford to buy a beauty parlour in Santa Barbara. A bitter row erupted and Frank ordered his tearful mother out of their home.

Within hours, Elizabeth had thrown back yet another handful of sleeping tablets. She wanted him to feel sufficient guilt to allow her back into his life. Frank rushed to her bedside as she lay recovering from her ordeal in Santa Barbara’s Cottage Hospital. Elizabeth purred with delight as Frank held her hand and begged for forgiveness.

Then into the ward walked attractive 29-year-old nurse called Olga Kupczyk, who’d moved to Santa Barbara the previous year from Vancouver, Canada, where her father had worked as a foreman on the railroad. She was a quiet, friendly girl without an enemy in the world.

Elizabeth Duncan watched with anger from her hospital bed as a romance blossomed between Olga and her beloved son. When Frank suffered a severe bout of flu a few days later Olga sent him a bunch of get-well roses. Elizabeth threw them straight in the bin. Not long afterwards, Elizabeth informed her elderly, demented cronie Mrs Emma Short that she would ‘break that little bitch’s legs’ if she continued romancing her beloved son.

Frank tried to play down his relationship with Olga because he knew his mother was angry about it. Then, in May 1958, Olga told Frank she was pregnant. The expected backlash from Elizabeth was as predictable as a bag of sand in the Sahara. Initially, Frank only admitted to his mother he was contemplating marriage to Olga. Within minutes, Elizabeth had picked up the telephone and started raging at
the pretty young nurse, ‘I will kill you before you ever marry my son.’

Frank tried to calm her down by promising he wouldn’t actually marry Olga without first giving Elizabeth some notice. But he went back on his word almost immediately by obtaining legal dispensation to marry Olga the following day. Frank couldn’t face telling his mother the truth. She’d long since turned him into a coward.

The secrecy that surrounded Frank and Olga’s wedding was more befitting a rock star than a mummy’s boy with a bad lisp and an average career in law. Frank ensured there were no telltale announcements in the local press. But he avoided certain issues by continuing to live with his mother and pretending that nothing had happened. The young couple’s romantic wedding night was interrupted when Frank got out of bed to return home to his domineering mother. As Frank later admitted, ‘It was a nightmare. I was going back and forth like a yo-yo.’ In many ways he only had himself to blame.

Frank had also completely misjudged his mother’s cunningness. She’d known about the wedding within hours of the ceremony, after phoning the hospital to speak to Olga only to be told by another member of staff that Nurse Kupczyk was packing in her job because she’d just got married.

This was war. And there could only be one winner: Elizabeth Duncan.

Just four days after the wedding ceremony, Elizabeth mounted her first outright attack on the unfortunate Olga by placing an advert in the local newspaper. It stated that
Frank Duncan was not responsible for debts contracted by anybody other than his mother. When Frank spotted the notice he weakly begged his mother to keep her nose out of his business.

Next Elizabeth began harassing Olga every time she saw her in the street. She also persuaded local shopkeepers that Olga was in debt at nearby department stores and should not be given any credit. Elizabeth even telephoned Olga most days threatening, ‘If you don’t leave him alone, I’ll kill you.’

But a few veiled threats were not enough to get rid of Olga. So Elizabeth recruited the help of her demented pal Mrs Emma Short and another Miss Marple clone, seamstress Helen Franklin. Together, this unlikely threesome hatched a plot to kidnap Frank and then ‘drum some sense into the boy’. They were going to knock him out with sleeping pills, drive him to Los Angeles and then force him to sign the relevant divorce papers. A few days later, those two little old ladies, Mrs Short and Mrs Franklin, talked their way into Frank’s apartment and tried to tie him up but he refused to
cooperate
and they ran out of the flat. Frank later laughed it all off as a practical joke.

Then Elizabeth got chatting to one of her less salubrious acquaintences, a local ex-convict called Ralph Winterstein, who’d been sent to clean her windows by the Salvation Army. Would he mind impersonating her son Frank in order to obtain an annulment of his marriage? Elizabeth convinced Winterstein that Frank couldn’t go in person to the courts because he didn’t want his professional reputation as a lawyer ruined by being spotted at the divorce court offices.

On 7 August 1958, Winterstein (posing as Frank),
Elizabeth Duncan (posing as Olga) and Emma Short (posing as Olga’s aunt) went to an attorney’s office in nearby Ventura County. The case was immediately scheduled for later that day. But when this unlikely threesome turned up in court, Sally Army man Winterstein broke down and admitted he was not Frank. He was later convicted of perjury and Elizabeth was spitting fire.

Olga was so worried by her unpredictable mother-in-law that she moved apartments twice but the obsessive Elizabeth Duncan tracked her down each time after following her beloved son Frank home from work. Elizabeth then insisted to one apartment block manager that Frank and Olga were ‘living together in sin’. Elizabeth then went and ruined it all by ranting, ‘She is not going to have him. I will kill her, if it’s the last thing I do.’

Then Elizabeth and her doddery partner in crime, Emma Short, started discussing murder as if it was as normal as that day’s weather forecast. Elizabeth concluded that her old favourite of throwing acid in Olga’s face couldn’t guarantee a fatality. Even with a badly burned face, Olga could prove a threat to Elizabeth’s bid to win back her son. Another plan involved luring Olga into Emma Short’s apartment where Elizabeth would be waiting with a rope. She’d leap out of a cupboard, strangle the nurse, then weigh her body down with rocks and hurl it into the nearby Pacific Ocean. Emma Short wasn’t keen because she didn’t want a corpse hanging in her neatly stacked closet for hours before they hauled it down to the beach. ‘I’d never be able to get rid of the smell,’ she said, with utter seriousness.

She approached another elderly neighbour called Barbara Reed to help ‘take care’ of Olga by throwing acid into her face before Elizabeth smothered Olga with a chloroformed blanket. Then Olga would be trussed up, driven to the mountains in Frank’s car and thrown off a cliff. Elizabeth even offered to pay £1,500 to Mrs Reed for her assistance. Mrs Reed told her friend Elizabeth she’d think about it and then told Frank who immediately confronted his mother. Elizabeth naturally insisted that Barbara Reed was lying. For some bizarre reason, Frank believed her.