A distinguished doctor, who bludgeoned his wife wi

A distinguished doctor, who bludgeoned his wife with a hammer and threw her 20 feet to her death from a window, is applying to be allowed back into his profession today.

(fri)

Vivian Grant Harris, 53, was struck off by the GMC in February last year for the horrific killing.

Unable to face the breakdown of their marriage Harris snapped and attacked Jocelyn Harris, 39, before dragging her up to the first floor of their luxury home in Kent.

Harris, whose mental deterioration had been noted by colleagues in the medical profession, then threw her out of the window of the master bedroom in a bid to make her death look like an accident.

But he was jailed for just six years at the Old Bailey in March 1998.

He was released from the prison term in June this year and appeared at the GMC today (fri) represented by top barrister Julian Bevan, QC.

The court was told Harris, said to have saved the lives of many women as a gynaecologist specialising in the field of cancer, had recently received notice of his wife’s intention to divorce him.

He called three character witnesses on his behalf
including Julia Morley, famed for running the Miss World contest.

She was due to attend the GMC today (fri) but she is still mourning the death of husband Eric.

Harris, known as ‘Grant’ to friends, who lived with his wife and two children, now aged 12 and 9, in a pnds stlg 750,000 five-bedroom detached house with swimming pool in (14) Hayes Lane, Beckenham, Kent, admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility having denied murder.

The plea was accepted by the Crown on the basis he was suffering from an ‘abnormality of mind namely a depressive illness when he killed his wife.

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Mr Bevan, who defending him at the Old Bailey, said then that his family was his life.

He was a ‘compassionate and caring doctor,’ he said.

‘He showed a genuine care to those who suffered cancer.

He devoted much of his life to
those under his care.

‘He has received literally hundreds of letters of comfort and support.

‘Something must have gone very radically wrong to cause him to act in his way.

The stress made him a mentally sick man.

‘

The then Recorder of London, Sir Lawrence Verney, QC,
told dishevelled and grey-haired Harris: ‘This is a tragic case and it must be obvious to all who have heard the facts that a life has been lost in circumstances which have caused the upmost grief to many people and any sentence imposed by the court cannot reduce that grief.

‘The responsibility for the death of your wife is yours and yours
alone.

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Harris, born in Newport, Wales, and a former scholar at Oxford University, embarked on a brilliant career after qualifying as a doctor in 1971.

He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, treating patients from Lewisham Hospital se London and from Guys.

Harris met his wife, know by friends as ‘Jo’, in 1979 when they both worked, she as an 18-year-old nurse, at University College Hospital.

They married in 1985.

After the killing police found Harris had a credit balance of pnds stlg 800,000 in two building society accounts.

Mrs Harris began divorce proceedings in 1994 but they agreed for a reconciliation.

In early 1997 Mrs Harris was having an affair with another man but her husband knew nothing of it until after his arrest.

On April 23, 1997, she instructed a solicitor to start divorce proceedings again stating she wanted him to leave the matrimonial home.

But Harris could not accept this and began drinking heavily and prescribing himself valium.

He suffered a panic attack and warned his superiors to keep an eye on him in case he became a danger to his patients.

On June 5, 1997, a morning clinic at Guys was cancelled and so it was he ended up at home with his wife.

As Harris later told detectives he picked up a club-hammer to repair some paving leading to the swimming pool when his wife made a derogatory remark to him.

He told police that he then snapped and hit her on the head with the hammer up to nine times causing severe skull fractures.

Then he carried his still alive wife upstairs and threw her out of the window having wrapped her in a
bin liner.

She fell onto the patio below and fractured her spine causing her death.

Harris had kept his head bowed in front of him as he was jailed for six years.

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Mr Bevan said that his client was an ’eminent’ gynaecologist and obstetrician whose skills ‘were an enormous asset to the profession,’ as shown by some 400 letters of support from former patients.

‘I do appreciate that he would have to be assisted before taking up practice even if this committee decided his name be restored to the register.

‘

Mr Bevan added that the longer this process took, the more difficult it would be for him to return.

He said Harris met his wife in 1980 while working at University College Hospital, when he was 34 and she was 22.

They married in 1985 but suffered problems as Mrs Harris thought her husband was mean, Mr Bevan said.

When she told him in 1997 that his wife wanted a divorce, Mr Harris became ‘an almost suicidal figure,’ the QC went on.

‘The truth of it was adored his wife and two children.

They were the whole of his life.

Without his family Dr Harris regarded his life as over.

‘

The divorce request was triggered when the doctor quizzed his wife over a one hour call on his mobile phone bill.

But she had simply refused to discuss her reasons with him for the divorce.

It was only when Harris saw prosecution papers at his Old Bailey trial that it dawned on him she was seeing another man.

‘Mentally he disintegrated to the point where he was clinically ill,’ Mr Bevan went on.

‘On the morning of the killing, Dr Harris did not have a clinic as it had been cancelled.

He had breakfast with the children and kissed them goodbye.

‘When he tried to kiss his wife goodbye he was rebuffed.

‘ She then went to have some coffee on the patio, and Dr Harris decided to break up the path leading to the swimming pool.

‘It was as he walked past her that she made some derogatory remark such as ‘saving money no doubt, by breaking up the stones yourself rather than employing somebody,” Mr Bevan said, adding that it ‘was a barbed remark.

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The QC continued: ‘It produced in Dr Harris an extreme and violent reaction.

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Mr Bevan told the GMC that as the psychiatric reports made clear, Harris had been suffering from what is legally termed ‘an abnormality of mind’.

As such his actions should not be judged against a person of sound mind.

‘When the killing took place he felt divorced from reality and he did what Miss Johnson has explained.

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But he knew he would be caught, the QC added.

‘There can be no question he did attempt to disguise what he had done, although as a doctor he must have known his efforts were futile.

The forensic evidence would demonstrate what happened.

‘It is equally plain that at interview he told lies, no doubt being wholly unable to confront himself with what he had done.

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Finally Harris did reveal his thoughts, using one word – ‘Shame’, Mr Bevan said.

Harris later told police he had suffered ‘feelings of worthlessness and disintegration and how he had effectively been destroyed as an individual.

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The GMC panel are currently considering Harris’s application.

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