Harris’ dying words to daughter: ‘Look after your mum’

Disgraced paedophile Rolf Harris’ final dying words can be revealed, almost a fortnight after the entertainer secretly lost his battle to neck cancer.

EXCLUSIVE

Disgraced paedophile Rolf Harris’ final dying words can be revealed, almost a fortnight after the entertainer secretly lost his battle to neck cancer.

We can reveal the once lauded national treasure begged his daughter Bindi to ensure his wife was cared for “until the very end”.

“Look after your mum. I always believed we would go on longer together but, if I go first, promise you’ll take good care of your mum,” a source close to the family said of the 93-year-old’s conversation with Bindi, in the days before his passing at his home in the UK on May 10.

Harris, speaking haltingly because of his cancer and feeding tube, urged Bindi to ensure Alwen, who is in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s, received 24-hour nursing care.

Former dancer Alwen, who remains at the family riverfront property in Berkshire, in South West England, is said to be unaware her husband has died.

Former Australian entertainer Rolf Harris with (from left) private investigator William Merritt, ormer PA Lisa Ratcliffe, friend Mike Kelly and former defence barrister KC Stephen Vullo.

Details of the father-daughter conversation came as a never-before-seen photo emerged of a jubilant Harris, sitting at his dining table with supporters last year.

Harris is pictured with private detective William Merritt, who’d just finished a book on his assault trials, former PA Lisa Ratcliffe, friend Mike Kelly and former defence barrister KC Stephen Vullo.

Harris, who’d hired Mr Merritt to investigate the backgrounds of the women who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by him, had just been presented with a copy of Rolf Harris: The Defence Team’s Special Investigator Reveals the Truth Behind the Trials.

“He could barely talk then and was very sick, he gave me a thumbs up and wrote on a piece of paper, ‘it’s bloody great mate, I love it, finally people will know the truth’,” Mr Merritt, who spent two years compiling the book, said of Harris’ reaction.

Before his death, Harris accumulated a $28 million fortune – including the $9.5-million Berkshire riverside mansion – the future of which remains unclear.

The mansion, with its views of the Thames, is just a 10-minute drive from Windsor Castle, where the pre-downfall Harris unveiled his portrait of the late Queen in 2012.

While in prison, Harris pocketed a $1.8 million payout after the break-up of his business empire, Rolf Harris Enterprises.

One of the last known photographs, taken last June, of disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris alive. Picture: Splash News/Media Mode

Harris, it was reported, shared the proceeds with Alwen, who jointly owned the business.

Some of Harris’ fortune was eaten up in compensation claims and cash payments to alleged victims.

In one case, a British woman was offered a pay-off of around $20,000 in 2015 after she claimed to have been abused.

And as recently as last March, the pervert was being sued over an alleged sex attack on a Melbourne woman at a foster carer camp on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in 1982.

Prosecutors in Harris’ sex crimes trial released a 2012 private email from Bindi to her father in which she described how inheriting his $20 million fortune would be like “winning the lottery”.

Despite his conviction and jailing for 12 sex offences on four female victims, she had defended her father as being from a different era.

Harris had not spoken publicly since his release from Stafford Prison in 2017, nor apologised for his crimes.