THE twisted crimes of a husband who murdered his wife and hid her body under floorboards have come back into the spotlight.
Harry Jarvis killed mum-of-four Carol and then left her body to decay just metres away from where his millionaire mistress was living on a mattress in his garden shed.
Netflix show Meet Marry Murder tells the horrific story of how Jarvis’ lover Rita Heyster, the heiress to the Jus-Rol pastry fortune, helped to conceal Carol’s body.
Having met in London, Harry and Carol moved to West Lothian in Scotland after Harry had ‘fallen out’ with his family.
Tragically, a degenerative muscle condition meant that by 2000 Carol needed to use a wheelchair.
The complexities of her medical difficulties meant that she became bedbound on occasion, in spite of undergoing tests to diagnose the problem.
Despite becoming his wife’s full-time carer, Harry soon began having affairs with other women.
One of these women was Rita Heyster, who had allegedly squandered her £2.5m fortune and resorted to moving into a B&B.
Exploiting his wife’s vulnerable condition, Harry shockingly let Rita move into his garden shed.
Infatuated with Harry, Rita accepted this bizarre offer and began sleeping on a mattress on the shed’s floor.
In the documentary, barrister Tony Keys says: “Everyone knew she was living in the garden shed. It must have been the strangest circumstances for local gossips to talk about.”
Increasingly frustrated by Carol’s presence, Rita and Harry began plotting her murder.
In one twisted letter to Rita, Harry wrote: “Drugs are doing job just took longer than I thought. But going fast now. See you in paradise soon. Carol is dying as I write. Then we have house to ourselves and sell all in it to move on.”
Graham Jarvis, the son of Harry and Carol, describes in the episode how Harry began exploiting his responsibility for administering his wife’s medication.
Instead of sticking to the guidelines, Harry would give her enough sleeping tablets to ensure she would be asleep for as long as he wanted.
Matters came to a head in September 2009 when the couple’s children visited their parents only for Harry to tell them their mother was in Dundee scouting potential locations for the couple to move to.
Graham said: “That was the time that alarm bells started ringing that something wasn’t right.”
Acting on their suspicions, the siblings alerted the police, who quickly visited the house.
Rather than finding Carol, the officers discovered Rita hiding under a bed.
In a desperate attempt to conceal the truth, Harry claimed Rita was in fact Carol.
This ruse was rumbled when an officer who had previously met Carol was able to identify Rita as an imposter.
Despite Harry returning to his previous lie that Carol was in Dundee, the police searched the house.
Officers discovered Carol’s body underneath the floorboards in a state of such decay that investigators could not ascertain a cause of death.
Knowing the game was up, Harry and Rita made a last-ditch escape attempt, but could only make it to Edinburgh before the police manhunt tracked them down.
This was not the end of their attempts to evade justice, however.
Pleading not guilty to murder, Harry claimed Carol died of a fit suffered after he acceded to her request to strangle her during sex.
He claimed he kept her body beneath the floorboards because he ‘couldn’t bear’ to be separated from her.
The jury were not convinced, finding him guilty and sentencing him in 2011 to life in prison with a requirement to serve 15 years in prison before being eligible for parole.
Graham said: “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for what he’s done.”
Harry died aged 67 of heart failure in prison in 2017.
While Rita was found not guilty of murder, she was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for her complicity in covering up the death.
