Rolf Harris dead: How a tradie’s tip led to former star being charged

The late Rolf Harris became the target of a major police investigation following a tip from a plumber. See what the tradie uncovered.

Rolf Harris’ name first came to police attention after a plumber fixing the water pipes in his home told detectives he had found a stash of child pornography videos under the floorboards.

The accidental find at Harris’ then southeast London home was in the 1970s but the tradie only came forward in 2012 after a blaze of publicity relating to Operation Yewtree.

Yewtree was set up to investigate allegations British TV icon Jimmy Saville had indecently assaulted or sexually abused more than 450 people mostly children but the publicity led to other celebrity names being put forward.

The plumber said he was shocked by stash and left them there but when officers went to the home more than 30 years later they were no longer there.

Ironically it would be in this house that Harris would later be accused of abusing a 13-year-old friend of his daughter Bindi.

But after the plumbers’ tip detectives knew they were on the right track after they interviewed Harris “under caution” and seized his home computer, finding child pornography files and a handwritten diary note detailing how to delete them from the browser history.

Former television entertainer Rolf Harris leaves Southwark Crown Court on May 22, 2017 in London, England. Picture: Getty Images

Among files about art and music, the browser allegedly showed 328 adult pornography searchers and 31 of child porn had been made and downloaded from websites including “tiny teen girlfriends” and “young little girlies” and involved galleries of “very young people in various levels of forbidden poses”.

“If it was an accident it appears it was one he had a number of times,” prosecutors told court after Harris was charged over the find and claimed the downloading was a mistake despite him returning “over and over” to certain images.

One file was called “watch my girlfriend” and featured two girls with a teddy bear in the foreground while another deleted file, later retrieved, featured just a girl’s genitalia the development of which suggested she was under 13 years.

Another was of a boy and girl in a pose that he allegedly downloaded and deleted four times and another, titled “bravo erotica” of others of girls wearing nothing but socks with titles including “Russian Virgins”, “Youngest Teen Porn” and “Tiny Teen P**sy”.

His diary with details about deleting files Harris admitted was to save embarrassment over adult erotica but the Crown could not prove the Eastern European children weren’t 18 years-old and only pretending to be younger.

But all the charges, despite the Crown alleging a “pattern of behaviour”, were to be dropped anyway as more serious allegations of actual abuse were levelled at the star.