Shari-Lea Hitchcock: Billionaires mistress appeals police bite conviction
The longtime mistress of late cardboard billionaire Richard Pratt has launched an appeal against her conviction for biting a police officer after a boozy lunch with fellow socialites.
Looking pale and dressed in figure-hugging dresses and high-heeled stiletto, Shari-Lea Hitchcock, 50, appeared in the Sydney District Court two days this week.
Hitchcock, who was Mr Pratt’s main mistress for 18 years and a beneficiary in the multi-billionaire’s will, was convicted last year of kicking and biting the female officer and assaulting a good Samaritan widow.
The offences happened after she was seen teetering in “thigh-high black boots” through traffic down Sydney’s Oxford Street after a Friday afternoon lunch in March 2016.
On the way home from church about 5.15pm, Jan Haswell, 67, found Hitchcock clinging to the wrong side of a railing that separated pedestrians from the traffic and intervened.
Highway patrol officers and police from Rose Bay in Sydney’s east were called and referred to Hitchcock as “IP”, for “intoxicated person”, the NSW District Court heard.
When police arrived, Hitchcock shouted at them, “I’m not f***ing going anywhere”.
In the Sydney Local Court last July, Magistrate Jennifer Atkinson found that Ms Haswell had tried to guide Hitchcock off the road. But when she bent down to pick up a hairbrush and sunglasses that had fallen from the socialite’s bag, she noticed a foot coming towards her head and had to twist Ms Hitchcock’s leg to avoid being kicked.
Unable to tell officers where she lived and trying to stop an officer taking notes at the scene, Hitchcock twice kicked at officers and bit a female policewoman on her left knee.
Hitchcock was handcuffed on the ground, placed in a police paddy wagon and arrested.
Police charged Hitchcock in March 2016 with common assault, assault police and resisting an officer in the execution of duty.
Hitchcock, who was left property and cash by Mr Pratt when he died aged 74 in 2009 from prostate cancer, is the mother of Mr Pratt’s youngest child, Paula, who is aged in her early 20s.
In 2015, Paula Pratt and Hitchcock successfully challenged in 2015 for a larger slice of the family fortune from Mr Pratt’s widow and executor, Jeanne.
In 2017, Magistrate Michael Barko rejected an application by Hitchcock’s lawyers to have the matters heard under the Mental Health Act.
Hitchcock pleaded not guilty to each charge last year but Magistrate Jennifer Atkinson found her guilty and placed her on a two-year bond for the bite police offence and two twelve-month bonds for the other charges.
This was despite arguments by Hitchcock’s barrister Daniel McMahon who had contested the legality of the arrest, tried to discredit the Ms Haswell’s testimony, claimed the police evidence was inconsistent and asked no conviction be recorded.
In Hitchcock’s appeal before District Court Judge Garry Neilson this week, Mr McMahon again argued police accounts of the event were inconsistent.
He said that the widow, Ms Haswell, “had a tendency for colourful or loose language” and he was concerned “about her reliability”.
“I don’t say for a moment she is dishonest,” he told Judge Neilson, “she is … a witness who is prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.”
He said that when going to Hitchcock’s aid, Ms Haswell “was effectively detaining my client and preventing her” from acting of her own free will.
Asked by Judge Neilson if that was “an accusation of false imprisonment”, Mr McMahon said it wasn’t.
He said “significant inconsistencies” between the accounts of different police had some saying Hitchcock was “calm and non-aggressive” at the scene.
Judge Neilson said it was possible the common assault might not have been a deliberate act and there was no evidence of Hitchcock saying “leave my stuff alone” to Ms Haswell.
The appeal continues before Judge Neilson in the NSW District Court on Friday.
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