Harper's Law

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Late at night on August 15th, 2019, two police officers in England were driving in an unmarked police car along this narrow, winding road when all of a sudden right in front of them, another car came bombing down the road towards them.

And so both cars came to a screeching stop and then one occupant from this other car got out of their vehicle and one of the officers got out of their vehicle.

What happened next was so horrific that a special law was passed to make sure it never happened again.

But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the Write Podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

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Okay, let's get into today's story.

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On July 18th, 2019, 28-year-old Andrew Harper scrawled a little note inside of a card, and then he folded the card up, he slipped it into its envelope, and he handed that envelope off to a nearby friend.

And this friend, after getting this envelope and Andrew's directions for what to do with it, he left Andrew's room and began walking down the hall all the way towards the other side of the Ardington house.

The Ardington House, where they were staying, is this beautiful mansion built in the 1700s that sits on about 30 acres of gardens and parklands, and it's located about an hour west of London in the English countryside.

Once Andrew's friend, with this letter in hand, had walked all the way across the mansion and had found the room he was looking for, he gently knocked on the door and then after being led inside, he made his way right over to 28-year-old Lissy Beckett and he handed her the envelope.

Lissy and Andrew had grown up in the same town of Wallingford, which is a small rural town about 10 miles away from where they were, the Ardington House, and from the time Lissy and Andrew had met each other when they were 15 years old, they had become totally inseparable.

It was truly love at first sight.

And now, 13 years later, they were finally getting married.

And so Lissy, after getting this envelope, she saw the writing on the outside of it and knew it was from her fiancé.

And so she smiled, she opens up this letter, and she reads what's inside.

And it just said, life is slippery.

Here, take my hand.

While on the surface, this little note seemed like nothing more than a romantic gesture from Andrew, in reality, those seven words contained in that card were a great representation of who Andrew really was.

He was a protector.

Ever since Lissy could remember, Andrew had always been so concerned with her safety.

And for that matter, anybody around Andrew, Andrew was just worried about and wanted to make sure everybody was taken care of.

And as Andrew got older and grew to be this massive six foot five inch tall man, his natural inclination to protect other people only became more pronounced.

While Andrew was known for being incredibly charming and friendly and approachable, At a moment's notice, he could flip the switch and literally step in and use his big frame to protect anybody that needed protecting, no questions asked.

And so it came as no shock to Lissy or really anybody who knew Andrew when Andrew, at the age of 19, became a special constable or volunteer police officer for the Tims Valley Police Department.

This police department was the same one that oversaw Wallingford where he and Lissy had grown up and also the surrounding areas.

And just a year after becoming a special constable, Andrew had done such an amazing job that he was hired on by the Tims Valley Police Department to be a regular constable, so a full-fledged police officer.

And over the following years that he was a regular constable, Andrew's hard work and dedication would quickly make him one of the most well-respected and well-liked police officers on the force.

In fact, just a few weeks before he sent off that letter to Lissy on the day of their wedding, Andrew had been promoted.

He had been assigned to the Road Policing Unit within the Tims Valley Police Department, and what that meant was, in addition to a host of new responsibilities on a day-to-day basis, Andrew would now become one of the police officers who would immediately respond to any emergency call that came in.

He was basically a front lines police officer now.

And so, of course, this meant Andrew's job just became a lot more dangerous.

But for Andrew, that didn't matter at all because to him, the most important thing was protecting people in need.

And so this promotion just gave him a bigger opportunity to do that.

And so Lissy, after reading this little note that Andrew had just sent her, she set it down on the table and now with a big grin on her face, she finished getting ready.

And then that afternoon, she and Andrew would walk down the aisle and they would say, I do, in front of their families and their closest friends.

And then that evening, after the newlyweds had had their first dance as a married couple, they would tell each other that this was the happiest day of their lives.

28 days later, on August 15th, Andrew, along with his partner, who also was named Andrew, his name was Andrew Shaw, they were conducting a surveillance operation in a town called Reading.

Reading is a town about 30 minutes south of Wallingford.

Just after 11 p.m., the men finally decided it was time to shut down their operation and head back home.

Their shift had actually ended four hours earlier, but being hardworking and diligent police officers, they had worked overtime because they knew it would help their unit.

But now at 11 p.m., they were totally exhausted, and so as they're kind of yawning and packing up their things, Shaw, who was driving, would fire up the engine of the unmarked BMW car they were in.

And then once it was on, he would pull away from the curb and they would start heading north.

At the same time, a very distressed man who lived not far from where Andrew and Shaw had just been doing surveillance, he called 999 and he told the dispatcher that just a few moments ago, this gray sedan had pulled up his driveway and stopped right outside of his property.

Now, this man's property was off of a road called Admore Lane, which was this winding one-lane country road that had very little traffic and there was not that many properties off of it.

And so for anybody to pull on to this man's property would have caught his attention, let alone a car pulling onto his property in the middle of the night.

And so as soon as the man had seen these headlights coming up his driveway, he had gone to the window and watched, wondering, you know, what is this person doing?

Had they turned onto the wrong property?

You know, are they going to turn around and leave?

But to his horror, once this car had stopped right outside of his house, three masked men who were carrying weapons of some kind got out of the vehicle.

And so at that point, the man had frantically dialed 999, and as he's trying to describe the situation to the dispatcher, he suddenly tells the dispatcher as he's looking out the window that he thinks these men are here to steal his quad bike.

His quad bike was parked right outside of his detached garage, and he saw them walking towards it.

And so he tells the dispatcher, who's already told him that police are on the way, he tells the dispatcher, I can't wait any longer.

I'm going out to confront them and stop them from stealing my bike.

The dispatcher yells at him not to and says, they have weapons, stay in your house, but this guy's not listening.

And so he runs to his front door, he opens the front door up, but by the time he's looking outside, the gray car, the three masked men, they're all gone.

And so too is his quad bike.

And so he goes back in the house.

He's talking to the dispatcher and the dispatcher says, look, just stay at your house.

The police are on the way.

They will intercept that car.

They'll get your quad bike back.

And so seconds later, a call went out over the radio to Tim's Valley Police to go and intercept this gray car on Admore Lane.

So whoever was closest, go over there.

But be advised, the occupants of this car are three masked men that are armed and dangerous.

Now, Andrew and Shaw, when they heard this call, they would have known that they were not the only officers that could have taken this call.

And they also would have known that they've been off the clock now for like four and a half hours.

There was no expectation that they would continue to work and go take this call.

But they didn't care at all.

When that call came across, the only thing they thought about was do your job.

And so Shaw, he whips the car around and he speeds towards Admore Lane and he pulls off of the main road called the A4.

He gets onto Admore Lane and he starts driving north.

Now, as soon as they turned onto that road, their vehicle effectively blocked the way for anybody coming the other direction.

And so at this point, they're expecting this gray car full of these masked men to be coming in their direction, and they are now blocking the way.

And so, Andrew and Shaw, as soon as they get on that road, they know a close quarters confrontation is almost guaranteed.

But when you listen to the dash cam footage from the front of their vehicle that picked up the voices of Andrew and Shaw as they turn onto this road, there is no nerves, there's no fear, there's no hesitation.

They are calm as can be.

This is what they have trained for.

They were ready.

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And so, Shaw, he's making his way up this winding road.

It's totally pitch black.

The trees are practically on top of the road.

It's like a tunnel of trees.

And so they're driving along this road.

And then all of a sudden, up in the distance, you can see on the dash cam footage, you see headlights bombing toward them.

They're way off in the distance.

And then all of a sudden, that car, these headlights, they come flooring out right in front of them.

And both cars come to a screeching stop.

You can hear the screeching of the brakes on the dash cam footage.

And so this car in front of them comes to a full stop.

And Shaw, he stops, but then he moves up just a little bit closer before fully stopping the car.

And so now the two cars are only maybe 10 or 15 feet apart.

At this point, it's important to understand that the vehicle that Shaw and Andrew were in was an unmarked car, and they had intentionally not put on their blue lights as they're cruising up this road because they didn't want the suspects to see the blue lights in the distance and turn around and get away.

And so now they've come face to face.

And so Andrew and Shaw, they're looking at this vehicle.

And they can see that one, it's a gray sedan.

So it matches the description of the car they're looking for.

And two, behind this gray sedan is what looks like a quad bike that they are towing.

And so they know this is the car they were looking for.

It's on Admore Lane.

This is going to be it.

And so Shaw, he flips on the blue lights.

And Andrew, who's in the passenger seat, he opens the door and begins yelling at the occupants to stay where they are.

But they don't listen.

because now the masked men in the gray car, they know they've been caught.

There's police right in front of them.

And so, suddenly, one of the masked men in the back seat of this car, he leaps out of the vehicle and he runs around to the back of the gray car and he unhooks the quad bike.

And then the gray car, without even waiting for this third masked man to get back inside, it just begins driving forward on the left side of Shaw and Andrew, basically trying to drive around them, despite the fact there's nowhere to drive.

It's a ditch on either side of the road.

But obviously, these guys are desperate and willing to do anything to get away.

And so this gray car has driven down into this ditch before Andrew and Shaw could do anything.

And then the third masked man, who's realizing he's being left behind, he starts running around the right side of the police car.

So he's trying to go around the other way.

And amazingly, as soon as the third masked man made it around to the back of the police car, the gray car somehow managed to pop out of the ditch and got back onto the road.

And it starts driving away from Shaw and Andrew.

And as they're driving away, the third masked man is just on the road running after them.

And so Andrew, seeing an opportunity to potentially grab this third masked man that was out on foot, he jumps out of the police car, he turns and starts running down the road after the suspects.

And so Shaw, he doesn't have enough space on this road to turn around and drive after them.

And so all he could do was put the car into reverse and then look over his shoulder and start driving in reverse after them.

And so as Shaw is driving backwards down this road, he can see out of his rear window Andrew who is chasing the third masked man who is chasing the gray car.

And so we can see all this happening out his back window.

And then something totally strange that just defied logic happened.

The third masked man suddenly leaps as if he's trying to jump into the moving car.

And at the same time, Andrew, who's closed the distance on him, kind of lunges for the third masked man.

And And then just as suddenly as these two maneuvers have happened, both men just vanish, and then the gray car just drives away and disappears.

And so Shaw, he's watching this happening, and he has no idea what he's just witnessed.

He's thinking, where did Andrew go?

Where'd the third masked man go?

What's happened?

But he still can only drive in reverse.

And so he's just driving and driving.

And then finally, he reaches a point in the road that's just wide enough that he's able to turn the car around.

And as he's doing that, you hear over dispatch that someone is asking Shaw, what's going on?

Where are you?

And all Shaw is able to say is, my partner, Andrew, has gotten out of the vehicle and I lost him.

I don't know where he is.

And so after Shaw has turned the vehicle around, he begins driving now facing the proper direction.

And as he's driving down this creepy dark road, you don't see anything.

It's eerily quiet.

Andrew's nowhere to be found.

The car is nowhere to be found.

The third masked man, there's no one.

And so Shaw is just driving down the road, hoping that as he makes one turn or the next, he's gonna see his partner just kind of running on the road somewhere, but he doesn't.

But as he's driving along, what Shaw didn't realize was that there were things in the road that belonged to Andrew.

They were kind of small, so he didn't see them, but the footage would later reveal that it was almost like there was this trail of Andrew's things kind of littered all over the road.

There was his wallet, then there was his badge, then there was his license and other ID cards, and then there was his glove, and then there was this piece of plastic that looked like it belonged on Andrew's vest.

And then a little farther down the road, because Shaw is still driving and scanning for his partner and scanning for anything and there's just nothing.

As he's driving along, he would, in real time, notice something of Andrew's.

And it was Andrew's stab vest that he wore over his chest.

And so he stops the vehicle and he gets out.

And again, he's on this totally pitch black road where it's weirdly quiet.

And he's walking up and he grabs the vest.

He comes back into his vehicle and he puts it down inside of his car.

And at this point over the radio, people are asking Shaw, you know, what's going on?

Where are you?

And you hear in Shaw's voice a bit of panic as he's like, I've found Andrew's stab vest.

It was on the side of the road.

And he can't make sense of that.

He has no idea why it's there.

And dispatch.

They don't know what to make of that.

And so Shaw just continued driving down this road, thinking to himself, what's happening here?

Meanwhile, less than a mile away at the end of Admore Lane, where it joined up with A4, which is where Andrew and Shaw had originally come in, two other Timms Valley police cars had arrived at that intersection.

They had gone there specifically to try to intercept this gray car as they fled.

And so they're sitting at this intersection and they're looking up Admore Lane and they see headlights bombing towards them.

It's the gray car.

And the gray car comes speeding out onto A4.

It makes a hard turn and it speeds away from these two police cars.

And so one of these two police cars that were waiting out on the A4, one of them takes off following the gray car.

But the other police car, they stay right there because unbelievably, they had just spotted Andrew.

It would turn out when Shaw first put the BMW into reverse and he began going in reverse towards his partner who was chasing the third masked man who was chasing the gray car.

When he was doing that and he was watching out his back window and he saw the third masked man jump and then disappear and then Andrew disappeared, that was not a figment of his imagination.

That really happened.

The third masked man had attempted to jump into the moving vehicle and he had been successful.

As for Andrew, why he suddenly vanished, the reason for that is truly horrific.

The three masked men were 18-year-old Henry Long and 17-year-olds Albert Bowers and Jesse Cole.

All three of them, prior to this night, had fairly extensive criminal records, and they proudly referred to themselves as career thieves, which basically just meant they spent all day and all night stealing from people.

And so that night, they had gone out with the intention of stealing that man's quad bike.

It's unclear how they knew he had a quad bike, but they definitely showed up prepared because they knew they would have to get onto his property and very quickly tow that bike out of there before the homeowner could stop them.

And so they had attached this long, very thick rope to the back of their gray car.

It was basically like this big loop of rope, almost like a lasso.

And so when they pulled up onto that man's property, they backed up to the quad bike and they looped that stretch of rope over the handlebars of this quad bike.

And then all three of them piled back into the gray car and they sped off with the quad bike in tow.

But when they were on Admore Lane and came face to face with Andrew and Shaw and realized those are police officers and were caught, the third masked man, aka Jesse Cole, he hopped out of the gray gray car, he ran around to the back, and he unhooked the loop of rope from this quad bike, ditching the quad bike by the side of the road, so that it would be easier for the gray car to make their getaway.

And so once it was free, the gray car kind of took off without Jesse.

And so Jesse ran around the cop car, but Jesse would get back up to the side of the gray car and he would leap into the window.

And as soon as he was inside, and Henry, who was driving, he knew he was inside, so they're all good.

Henry hit the gas.

And who was standing with both feet inside of that loop of rope dangling off the back of the gray car when the gray car suddenly accelerated?

Andrew Harper.

Andrew was swept off of his feet as the rope grabbed onto his legs, and so his head came back and smashed into the ground.

And then he was dragged for 91 seconds at an average speed of 42 and a half miles per hour down Admore Lane.

It was only after he had been dragged for over a mile, whipping violently violently side to side, smashing not only into the ground, but into trees and fence posts and shrubs, just getting destroyed on this road, that finally, when they pulled off of Admore Lane and got onto A4, that turn swung Andrew around and he smashed into a curb that dislodged him from the rope and sent him careening into traffic.

At that point, one of those two police cars took off after the gray car in pursuit.

But the other car, they saw Andrew as he was thrown off the back of the gray car and launched onto A4.

Now, initially, they actually thought that the suspects were just hauling a dead deer behind them because it looked like a bloody deer carcass was dangling behind the car.

But when they ran up to see what it was, they saw it was their colleague.

It was Andrew.

And so immediately they tried to save his life, but Andrew's injuries were catastrophic.

He had been destroyed.

And so Andrew Harper would die at 11.45 p.m.

on the side of the A4, about 20 minutes after he and his partner had so selflessly agreed to go after this car despite the fact they didn't have to.

The three killers were arrested about one hour after Andrew had died.

A police helicopter had spotted their car parked amongst some buildings about four miles away from where Andrew was found.

During their trial, the three teens would say they had no idea that Andrew was attached to that tow rope as they sped down Admore Lane.

This is despite the fact that the prosecution, they went out and recreated the exact scene that played out on Admore Lane.

They used the same car, they used the same tow rope, and they used a very lifelike dummy that was the same size as Andrew Harper.

It was six foot five, 200 pounds, and they strapped it on the back of the car, and they drove the same mile stretch to see what it would be like to drive with Andrew attached to the back.

And these experts that went through this recreation over and over over and over again, they said the same thing.

It was nearly impossible to drive the car because as soon as the dummy would start to shift one way or the other, it would tug and pull on this little gray car.

And so handling this car would have been a nightmare, not to mention the fact that the sound of Andrew grinding against the cement and smashing into trees and posts would have been extremely loud.

And so the prosecution attested that there was absolutely no way that those three teens wouldn't have known that there was a person connected to the back of their car.

Also, the prosecution said that all along Admore Lane, they found blood on both sides of the road, high up into bushes and on trees, indicating that as Henry had driven along with Andrew behind him, he must have been swerving violently side to side, most likely, at least according to the prosecution, to try to dislodge the person that was stuck on the back of his car.

But the three teens never changed their story.

They also never once said they regretted what they did.

They showed absolutely no remorse.

And when the verdict was read, and these three teens were not found guilty of murder, they were found guilty of manslaughter, but everybody knew that was significantly better because the sentences were so much shorter.

When that verdict came back, These three teens were punching the air and cheering and laughing, just making a complete spectacle out of it.

And then after being led out of the courthouse with the devastated family family of Andrew Harper basically watching them, they were smirking and smiling at the cameras and waving and just treating the whole thing like it was one big joke.

Still to this day, none of them have apologized or expressed any regret or remorse about what happened.

In fact, two of the killers, Jesse and Albert, they've come out publicly and said they're going to write a book about this crime, about killing Andrew Harper, and there's no indication that this book is being written because they feel bad.

It's almost certainly being written because it's an opportunity to make money.

Following the verdict, Andrew's wife, Lissy, who was totally devastated not only by the loss of her husband, but also by what she viewed as total injustice with regards to the fact that these three killers had not been convicted of murder, she would go on to lobby for years to pass a brand new law called Harper's Law that would give an automatic life sentence to any criminal that killed an emergency worker while they were committing a crime, meaning this law would not differentiate between whether it was manslaughter or murder.

If you killed an emergency worker while committing a crime, you're going to jail for life.

And this year, Harper's Law was passed.

However, it will have no effect on the sentences of Andrew Harper's killers.

Henry would be sentenced to 16 years in prison, and the other two, Albert and Jesse, would be sentenced to 13 years in prison each.

All three of them will be eligible for parole by the time they are 28 years old, which is the same age that Andrew was when they killed him.

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