Hitmen: True Stories of Street Executions

by Wensley Clarkson

  Police soon established that Harrold pocketed at least £100,000 of undeclared income each year. A further import-export line in hard-core sex magazines – described in court as ‘commodities’ – was his next venture. Colin Harrold’s crafty wheeler-dealings were beginning to make him look like a possible suspect in the murder of his wife.

  Detectives retracing Colin Harrold’s footsteps while he was away on his ‘business trip’ in Amsterdam discovered he’d frequented the city’s notorious red-light district after he’d phoned his brother to check up on why Diane had not been answering her phone at home. Was his role as a caring, loving husband all a charade?

  Then Harrold’s former wife Annette told police that two weeks before Diane’s death, Harrold told her he was having an affair with another woman and that he was in love with her. Annette later recalled, ‘Knowing how we parted over money I said to him that it would cost him dearly. He said to me, “I’m already working on it.”’

  Annette Harrold also told police that after Diane’s death her former husband insisted his new wife had been murdered during a burglary but then made a point of saying she wasn’t to worry about the safety of their children. Up to this point, police had deliberately not yet revealed that they knew there hadn’t been a break-in.

  Then it emerged that, the month before Diane was murdered, Colin Harrold booked into a health farm in Leicestershire with his latest mistress, Tania McCarter. They spent much of the day together in a whirlpool bath and steam room. Harrold later admitted to police that they’d had a ‘touch and feel’ session. But Ms McCarter insisted they did not have full sex and that – shortly before Diane was murdered – she’d finished her relationship with Harrold because he was married.

  Then one of Diane’s oldest school friends told police she’d noticed the couple arguing when she stayed with them two months before Diane’s murder. Joanne Hewitt said, ‘It was tetchy. There were arguments. Diane had everything apart from what she really wanted, which was children. She made a lot of overtures about wanting children. But he said he didn’t want children.’

  Another woman called Kim Milne met Harrold and his best friend Darren Lake on a night out with friends in a bar in Peterborough. During a conversation she asked Harrold if he was married. Harrold answered, ‘I’ve been married for two years. Two years too bloody long. Money is changing hands as we speak. I am doing something about it.’

  Police believed that whoever committed the murder expected detectives to accept that Diane Harrold had slipped and fallen into the pool by accident after trying to find her cat, Cleo. But among the bloodstains in the house was a shopping bag smeared with a handprint which they believed came from the killer. And one of the names that kept coming up during police enquiries was Harrold’s best friend Darren Lake. Harrold’s friends and associates said the two men were very close. Lake eventually agreed to have his fingerprints taken. Investigators were astounded to find that it was Lake’s handprint on that plastic bag.

  On 12 November 1999, Colin Harrold and 30-year-old Darren Lake were arrested in connection with the murder of Diane Harrold. Lake had been best man at Harrold’s marriage to his first wife Annette. Harrold was taken into custody by police at a house in Peterborough and held with Lake at Boston Police Station in Lincolnshire. A white Vauxhall Astra belonging to Lake was also taken away for forensic examination.

  Colin Harrold’s ex-wife Annette then told reporters from her home in nearby Yaxley, Lincolnshire: ‘I have been praying this wouldn’t happen for the sake of the children. I am horrified – but not shocked.’ She later told one newspaper how she’d once arrived home early to find Harrold dressed in her clothes. She also claimed he was obsessed with both gay and straight pornography.

  Back in the sleepy community of Uffington, Harrold’s arrest for murdering his wife astonished the locals. Retired farmer and neighbour John Conington said, ‘I am flabbergasted by the news of Colin Harrold’s arrest. That anything like this could happen in our village is almost unthinkable.’

  Shortly after the arrests, detectives uncovered a letter Darren Lake had written to his father in which he claimed that he himself might be Harrold’s ‘next target’. The letter said, ‘There will be one of three reasons for my death: No 1 – natural or accidental death. No 2 – a man hates me and has it in his head that I have slept with his girlfriend. No 3 – this is probably the real reason for my death: Colin Harrold has probably either paid for my hit or killed me himself.’

  Shortly after the letter emerged, Lake confessed to his part in the murder to police and alleged he’d been paid £20,000 to kill Diane Harrold.

  Colin Harrold made his first court appearance following his arrest in a ten-minute hearing. He was on crutches following a sporting accident in the Nottingham prison where he was being held. His best man Darren Lake later wept in court as the charges against him were read out.

  In July 2000, Nottingham Crown Court was told that Colin Harrold, who’d already begun an affair with another woman, had decided it would be too expensive to divorce his wife so he’d have her murdered instead. James Hunt QC, prosecuting, told the court: ‘This man, Colin Harrold, had a wife, Diane. She was his second wife. She wanted children. He did not. Moreover, he became tired of her and was playing with another woman. He had a lot of money and lived a lavish lifestyle. It would have been expensive to divorce his second wife and she would know too much of his shady business to be bought off cheaply. He therefore arranged a contract with a friend, named Darren Lake.’ QC Hunt continued, ‘This case is not a whodunnit. We know whodunnit. Darren Lake has admitted it. It is a question of who got him to do it. We say that it is plain. That it was Colin Harrold. Although items in the house were disturbed, it was plain that it was not a burglary.’

  Lake initially told the court he’d worked as Harrold’s ‘gofer’ for £30 a day and the businessman had even lent him £2,000 to buy a car. Then, a month before Diane’s murder, Harrold offered to write off the loan and pay him a further £18,000 to get rid of his wife.

  Lake recalled, ‘We were in his office having a coffee and he said, “I have a proposition for you. I’ll give you £20,000 to knock off Diana.” I was shocked. He then put his hand in his pocket and brought out a photograph. It was a picture of me on holiday ten years ago when I was about 20. It was in Tenerife, our first trip abroad.’

  Lake said the photo showed him being raped by three men, on the beach at Playa de las Americas. He insisted to the jury that he didn’t know who took it. Lake claimed Harrold then said that unless Lake carried out the killing, copies would be sent to his father, his fiancée and a former girlfriend, the mother of his seven-year-old son. Lake insisted that his ‘whole world caved in’ when he was shown the picture by Harrold, who had kept it for ten years.

  Lake told the court: ‘With Colin you don’t say “no”. I never said yes – it was just expected.’ He went on, ‘He said it would be easy – easy, no problem. “Just knock her on the head and put her in the pool and make it look like an accident.”’

  Lake even recalled how he set about committing the murder which they both codenamed ‘Cleo’ after Diane Harrold’s cat. When Diane returned home from work that evening, Lake said he sat chatting with her on the sofa before producing a wooden post and hitting her over the head with it. ‘There was blood everywhere inside the house,’ he told the hushed court. Then Lake said he pushed Diane Harrold’s body into the water, returning several times to ensure that she had not climbed out. Lake was then asked by QC James Hunt, ‘How could you do such a thing?’ Lake looked across at Harrold and said, ‘I was frightened of him.’

  One of Colin Harrold’s cellmates even took the witness stand and claimed that the businessman had confessed to the killing while in jail awaiting trial. John Bond, 44, explained: ‘He told me he left the money for the hit in the house, and Lake made it look like a break-in.’

  When Colin Harrold finally took the witness stand he insisted he was ‘very much in love’ with his brutally murdered w
ife. 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.’

  Chapter Four:

  THE MOTHER-IN-LAW FROM HELL

  Elizabeth 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 liv
ing 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.