Rolling Stone's banker claimed wife tried to kill him just days before he died

Timothy Cox leaving court
13 April 2012

A millionaire banker whose £10m estate is now being contested in the High Court claimed his second wife was trying to kill him shortly before he died, a judge has heard.

Richard Cox-Johnson, who made a fortune by reviving a merchant bank and managing the investments of the Rolling Stones, died two years ago aged 70.

He left £6.6m between three of his sons, James, Timothy and Nicholas, and £2.6m plus his £1.2m country home to his second wife, Lady Caroline Cox-Johnson.

But the brothers claim their stepmother should not receive any money because their father was not fully mentally able when he wrote his last will.

Yesterday the High Court heard a claim that Mr Cox-Johnson was living in fear of Lady Caroline, who is a grand-daughter of Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.

Jonathan Arkush, representing the brothers, questioned Lady Caroline about an incident shortly before her husband's death, when James Cox-Johnson and his wife Frances were staying with his father and stepmother at their country house.

The barrister said that the late Mr Cox-Johnson had got up early and gone into James's bedroom.

Mr Arkush said: "You followed him and had to pull him out.

"Did you hear your husband say 'James, James, she is trying to kill me'?"

Lady Caroline laughed at the claim, and insisted she only pulled her husband out because his son and daughter-in-law were still asleep.

Lady Caroline said: "He might have said it, but I don't know why he said it."

The late Mr Cox-Johnson's first wife Judith died in 1997, and he married widow Lady Cox-Johnson two years later after a whirlwind romance.

His sons claim that his Parkinson's disease and a stroke contributed to a rapid mental decline, and that his last will, leaving £2.6m to his second wife, did not represent his true attentions.

The brothers, however, are accused by Lady Caroline's legal team of conducting a "secret campaign" to secure almost all of their father's legacy - a campaign which included secretly videoing him at a lunch in support of their claim.

They say he had begun acting out of character by making inappropriate remarks to women, and urinating in public.

Yesterday Lady Caroline, daughter of the 5th Earl of Stradbroke, told the London court that her husband remained a well-mannered gentleman and enthusiastic reader to the end.

She did accept, though, that the late Mr Cox Johnson, who lived with her at Skaiteshill House in Gloucestershire, was sometimes eccentric about money - once refusing to give her £5 to buy a jar of honey despite having a £10m fortune, she said.

Responding to a claim that shortly before his death her husband behaved inappropriately with family friend Joyce Part Lady Caroline insisted it was in fact Mrs Part who had done so by forcing him to dance.

Lady Caroline said: "She was fluttering away and nestling on him - and I thought he was going to fall over. It was inappropriate to dance with someone with Parkinson's like that."

In a statement Lady Caroline said she and her husband had become increasingly worried about the three boys snooping into his financial affairs.

"I did find Timothy and his wife Caroline's visits increasingly unnerving," she said, "Timothy was like a predator, prowling around, never relaxed or humrous, looking at the paintings and even claiming one of my family's portraits was his grandmother."

She added: "Richard thought too much money was not good for people."

Lady Caroline added that she had been disappointed to receive only a few thousand pounds in her mother's will, when she had been hoping to receive a third of the village of Clovelly in Devon, which has been in her family for centuries.

Without the £2.6m from her husband's will she would struggle to survive on her current income of £100,000 a year, she suggested.

The case continues.

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