- Helen and Alexandra Veevers accused of poisoning father Harry
- Two sisters insisted the property tycoon’s heart attack was due to natural causes
Helen and Alexandra Veevers once had a vague notion that by the time they reached their mid-30s they would be secure in their careers and married with children.
Instead, as they watched their friends settle down, the sisters were forced to set aside their modest ambitions and spend more than a decade defending themselves against an extraordinary claim – patricide.
Helen, now 36, and Alexandra, 34, along with their mother, were accused of poisoning their property tycoon father Harry Veevers for his £7million fortune.
It was, they say, a wicked lie, a fantasy concocted by their older half-brothers Richard, 47, and Philip, 45, from their father’s first marriage, to deny them their inheritance.
The two sisters, from Manchester, insisted their 64-year-old father’s heart attack on Valentine’s Day 2013 in Kenya was due to natural causes alone.
Yet the Kenyan authorities entertained the brothers’ claims of foul play and exhumed Mr Veevers 11 months later.
Analysis of tissue and soil samples produced conflicting results. It would be left to an inquest in the coastal city of Mombasa to decide if he had been poisoned.
To the sisters’ huge distress, the allegations were reported round the world. And the story of feuding and murder among wealthy Kenyan expats has drawn inevitable comparisons with the White Mischief case of 1941, dramatised in a novel and Hollywood movie.
At stake was more than Mr Veevers’ estate. Helen and Alexandra, and their mother Azra Parvin Din, 75, were warned that if the ruling went against them they could face criminal charges – and the terrifying possibility of a jail sentence in a country where prison conditions are said to be among the worst in the world.
Beset by delays due to a backlog of cases and reasons not immediately clear, the inquest dragged interminably. One hearing was abandoned when Helen received intimidating texts from a man who turned out to be the court clerk.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that only now, eight years after it opened in a blaze of publicity, has the inquest reached a conclusion.
Oddly, the verdict caught both sides’ legal teams by surprise – they were expecting a routine case management hearing. By chance, Alexandra was in court that morning because she and her sister were desperate to find out when a ruling was expected.
Suddenly a court official began reading from a sheet of paper containing magistrate Charles Ndegwa’s entire assessment of the long-running case.
Alexandra felt ‘my heart beat out of my chest’. The official told the court: ‘Lastly, and most importantly, no concrete evidence has been adduced to show that anyone was criminally responsible for the death of the deceased. In the circumstances, I direct the court file be closed.’
To the sisters, though relieved, ‘it felt a bit of an anti-climax’. Mr Ndegwa’s statement failed to even hint at the case’s twisting complexities, far-reaching consequences and the scorched trail it left behind.
Then there is the unresolved question of the Rochdale businessman’s estate. Mr Veevers died without leaving a will. A letter he wrote purportedly outlining his final wishes went missing from a Barclays bank safety deposit box. Promising to be as rancorous as the inquest, the inheritance battle is on the horizon.
For now, the sisters are numb and struggle to make sense of the case that, says Helen, put their ‘lives on hold’ for more than ten years. Actually, she adds, ‘it’s worse than that – our lives were ruined by the most ridiculous, wicked, horrible lie’.
Alexandra says: ‘The emotional and psychological impact has been enormous. For all these years we have had to live with the awful fear of being jailed in Kenya for something we haven’t done. It’s hard to imagine much worse than being wrongly accused of murdering our father, a man we all loved dearly.
‘The same goes for our mother. It’s been horrendous for her. There has also been the knock-on effects and the “no smoke without fire” thing. I haven’t dated anybody since Dad died.
‘And I don’t get parcels delivered to my home as I don’t want neighbours to see my name.’
Like her sister, Helen is single. Both live in rented accommodation. ‘We can’t get mortgages as all our money has gone into fighting to clear our names,’ she says.
Helen adds that the case ruined friendships and relationships. She had to give up her job as an estate agent, instead taking a much lower profile role with a security company.
When their grandmother died, a relative warned them not to attend the funeral. ‘It was crazy,’ she says. ‘Of course we went, but it’s an example of the suspicions this has sown.’
Toxic in more ways than one, the case featured lies, fraud and corruption. At its heart was the question of whether or not Mr Veevers was poisoned. Kenyan scientists claimed to have found traces of the insecticide cyhalothrin after exhuming his body. But in 2018 a British forensic scientist, Dr Alexander Allan, told the inquest that a re-analysis of soil and soft-tissue samples, using a highly sensitive technique, had found no such trace of the toxic compound.
In his report, seen by The Mail on Sunday, Dr Allan, who worked for the Home Office for 20 years, noted intriguingly: ‘From the circumstances supplied to me it appears that the most likely scenario for the origin of any confirmed cyhalothrin would have been post-mortem addition.’
Mr Veevers’s remains have been stored at Mombasa hospital since exhumation, but the sisters and their mother now hope to rebury him with dignity. The exhumation, they say, was an emotional attack.
Helen fears her brothers now want him cremated in England. ‘This would be against his religion,’ she says.
Her father married his first wife very young, and divorced her in 1980 after having three children, Alison, Richard and Philip. He later met Azra, a woman of Indian heritage who was born in Uganda before moving to Britain and settling in Rochdale.
They married in an Islamic ceremony and raised Helen and Alexandra as liberal Muslims. Harry later converted. The Veevers often visited Kenya during Helen and Alexandra’s childhood. Eventually the couple moved to Mombasa, where they built three houses next to one another, living in one while the others stayed empty as investments. Helen and Alexandra, by then adults, remained living in Britain.
Harry later suffered high blood pressure, angina and an inner ear problem. On the day he died he complained of chest pains, dying as doctor arrived at his home.
Helen told the inquest of the moment she informed Richard, known as ‘Dragon Rik’ because of a dragon tattoo the length of his body. ‘I could tell the news made him happy. He said he’d been waiting for this day. He said we could start by sharing the contents of my father’s UK bank account, which had £500,000 in it. He was excited.’
Following the death, Richard, Philip, Alexandra and Helen flew to Kenya together, though it was later claimed, wrongly, that the sisters were in Kenya when he died.
On landing, the first sign of division emerged. The brothers said Harry was buried without their knowledge; the sisters say the brothers took part in the funeral.
The brothers claimed there were strange marks on the body and they were advised that they indicated poisoning; Helen says they have failed to present any evidence.
She accused Richard of seizing control of the family properties and Harry’s car without agreement, and renting out Harry and Azra’s house without consent. Alexandra told the inquest she saw Richard and Philip in the mortuary with their father’s body, wearing latex gloves and ‘holding some sort of instrument’.
Although their father did not leave a will, Helen told the inquest that it was known ‘throughout the family’ that there was a letter in a safety deposit box at Barclays bank in Mombasa to be opened in the event of his death. Harry’s brother Chris, who had been granted access, found the box empty.
Helen told the court she believed the letter might have disinherited Richard and he ‘did a deal’ with a bank employee to get rid of it.
‘My uncle Chris agreed my father was very shrewd with money and would never have paid for a bank box that was empty,’ she said.
‘My uncle warned me that Richard was trying to set us up, accusing us of poisoning my father to get his money. He said, “You girls need to be careful.’’ ’
It was also claimed that Mr Veevers had threatened to leave Azra, now living in Hampshire, for another woman – but the sisters insist the supposed ‘affair’ is another twisted fabrication.
All sides are considering their next moves. ‘We will come to court and testify,’ says Helen. ‘We were really scared all the way through. Some days I was so anxious I would wake up with my nails imprinted into the palm of my hand from clenching my fists during the night. But we’re not giving up.’
Neither are their brothers. Richard and Philip, who deny their sisters’ allegations, intend challenging the inquest ruling in Kenya’s High Court. Their lawyer Francis Kinyua said: ‘They are upset but their position hasn’t changed.’
William Turner is a seasoned U.K. correspondent with a deep understanding of domestic affairs. With a passion for British politics and culture, he provides insightful analysis and comprehensive coverage of events within the United Kingdom.
