ROLF Harris’ will reveals who inherited his £16 million fortune after his wife’s death – including a last-minute change.
Alwen Hughes has passed away aged 93, it has been confirmed today.
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She had stood by her paedophile husband when he was jailed in 2014 for 12 indecent assaults on four underage girls between 1968 and 1986.
They were married for 65 years prior to Harris’ death from neck cancer in May 2023.
Hughes has previously been pictured in a wheelchair and was reportedly suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in her final years.
Best known for hits Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport and Jake The Peg, as well as a string of children’s TV shows, Harris also painted the 80th birthday portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
He had accumulated a large fortune, with his paintings alone valued at an estimated £12 million.
Harris’ other assets included his riverside mansion in Berkshire, as well as the proceeds from the sale of his businesses when he went to prison.
The former star left the bulk of his estate to his only child Bindi.
However, the convicted paedophile also added his loyal personal assistant Lisa Ratcliff as executor to his will in a last-minute decision before his death, the Mirror reported last November.
Harris’ friend William Merritt said of Mrs Ratcliff: “She was fiercely protective of him and pretty much managed his entire life, from his carers to deciding to whom or whether he should give interviews, and taking him to his appointments.”
“Bindi is a lovely woman but couldn’t manage the care of her mother and father herself and leant increasingly on Lisa,” he told Australian media.
“Rolf before his death made Lisa an executor to his estate and said he put Lisa in charge of his paintings – before his court convictions they were worth around £12 million ($A22m).
“The paintings would have gone down in value since his convictions – some of them used to sell for up to £125,000 ($A240,000) or more a piece. Rolf was up there with Hirst and Picasso.”
He added: “Before Rolf died Lisa was made an executor to his estate with Bindi and put in sole charge of his paintings which are in storage and were worth £12m ($A22m) before his convictions”.
Ms Ratcliff began working closely with Harris in 2000 under then-theatrical agent Jan Kennedy who managed him.
She has also been organising carers for Hughes for years.
WHO WAS ROLF HARRIS?
ROLF HARRIS died in May 2023, almost a decade after he was jailed for a a string of sex attacks on children.
Prior to his crimes becoming public knowledge, the disgraced star was known for being a TV presenter, musician and artist.
Harris was born on March 30, 1930, in Perth, Australia.
His parents, Agnes and Cromwell, had emigrated there from their previous home in Cardiff, Wales.
Harris showed an interest in art from a young age and was just 16 when a self-portrait he painted was exhibited in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
He was also a keen swimmer as a youngster.
In 1953 Harris, then aged 22, left Australia to move to England and a year later he landed a role presenting a children’s art show on the BBC.
Harris married Alwen Hughes, a Welsh sculptress and jeweller, while they were both art students in March 1958.
He then returned to Australia to take on more TV work and start his music career.
It was during this stint Down Under that he first began using his famous catchphrase – “Can you tell what it is yet?” – while on a promotional tour of Australia for Dulux.
Harris returned to the UK in 1962 and re-recorded his hit Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.
Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport was a Top 10 hit in Australia, the UK, and the United States, and Harris even performed it with The Beatles.
He went on to land a UK No1 with Two Little Boys in 1969 and a No7 hit with Stairway to Heaven in 1993.
As well as becoming famous for his music, Harris became a popular television personality in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to his roles on The Rolf Harris Show, Rolf’s Cartoon Club and Animal Hospital.
In 2005 Harris, who lived in Bray in Berkshire for more than six decades before his death, painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.
Harris had one child, a daughter called Bindi, with his wife.
In 2023 it was reported that she had changed her name to Ava Reeves in an attempt to distance herself from her dead father.
Bindi attended every day of Harris’ trial in 2014, alongside her mum, though it was later reported she changed her name to Ava Reeves in a bid to distance herself from her father.
Harris was convicted of 12 sex attacks on girls as young as seven and was handed a jail sentence of just under six years.
A family friend previously told the Daily Mail that daughter Bindi had had “nothing to say about him for years”.
Bindi’s initial defence of her father following his convictions came at its own price.
Notably the end of her four-year relationship with Malcolm Cox, with whom she had a son, Marlon.
WHY DID HARRIS GO TO PRISON?
Rolf Harris was convicted of 12 counts of indecent assault in June 2014 and was subsequently jailed for five years and nine months.
When sentencing, Judge Mr Justice Sweeney said: “Your reputation now lies in ruins, but you have no one to blame but yourself.”
The disgraced star was released from prison in May 2017 part-way through a re-trial on four accusations of indecent assault, but was rarely seen in public in the period between then and his death.
The last photo of the former presenter before his death aged 93 showed him in a wheelchair after neck cancer left him needing 24-hour care.
Harris appeared at the Court of Appeal in London to try and overturn his 2014 convictions in November 2017, claiming jurors in the case were “poisoned” against him.
One conviction was overturned following his appeal, but the other 11 remain.
Harris stood trial for a second time in 2017, accused of four counts of indecent assault against three teenage girls, the youngest of who was 13, at public events between 1971 and 1983.
The retrial heard from the three women who claimed Harris molested them when they were young.
They included a woman who alleged he groped her at a music event in London when she was 14 in 1971, and a 16-year-old who told jurors he touched her inappropriately during filming of ITV show Star Games in 1978.
The 13-year-old alleged he molested her after an episode of BBC children’s programme Saturday Superstore in 1983.
Harris did not give evidence, with his lawyers saying he did not remember any of the events.
His lawyers claimed that the women were motivated by greed, coming forward after he was convicted in June 2014 of 12 counts of indecent assault.
After deliberating for just under five hours at Southwark Crown Court in London, the jury said they were unable to reach verdicts on any of the four charges and were discharged by Judge Deborah Taylor.
Harris had denied all four counts against him.
Harris was found guilty of carrying out a number of indecent assaults against children at the height of his fame.
He committed 12 indecent acts against children in a period between the 70s and 80s, where he regularly appeared on TV.
The crimes were committed against four girls – one of who was aged just seven or eight.
His trial heard that one of the victims was a childhood friend of his daughter and another a young autograph hunter.
One count of indecent assault was overturned due to an unsafe conviction in 2017.
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