The daughter of pirate a radio legend who fell to his death from a window is fighting his family for a share of his £1.4million estate after he ‘jubilantly’ cut her out of his will.
Roger Howe branded daughter Jenna a ‘lazy useless, lying druggy’ and vowed she would never see a penny of his money when he changed his will in 2017, just three years before his death, a court heard.
The former rigger who made a fortune exporting radio equipment left the money to his 86-year-old mother Rosina, his sister, Tina Tucker, 57, and his two nephews, Ross and Jamie Tucker.
Tina Tucker told the court that her brother ‘gave up’ on his daughter after making repeated attempts to help her when she fell into drug addiction.
But Jenna, 37, told the court that she was the target of savage barbs from her father as a child and ‘teased about her weight’ when she suffered from bulimia and depression as a teenager.
‘Roger’s conduct weighs heavily in this case,’ her barrister James McKean told Judge Mark Raeside KC.
‘She now recalls several occasions on which he would belittle her, including one where he weighed her in front of a lodger.
‘His treatment of Jenna as a child and young adult has shaped the rest of her life, and a direct link can be drawn between that and her need for financial provision.’
Jenna Howe, left, with her mother outside court, is claiming a share of her father’s £1.4m will
Roger Howe branded his daughter a ‘lazy useless, lying druggy’ and vowed she would never see a penny of his money when he changed his will in 2017, a court heard
Howe was only eight years old when he built his own transistor radio and was building complex AM and FM transmitters by the time he was 15.
A year later he began making rigs for London pirate radio stations, including JFM, a specialist jazz funk station before building a successful export business BW Broadcast FM, developing technology for both commercial and military clients.
He divorced Jenna’s mother when his daughter was just two years old and was ‘not sympathetic to her needs’ her while she was growing up, Central London County Court was told.
A friend of Howe’s claimed he had ended up viewing his only child with ‘unambiguous hatred’ despite her attempts to reconcile, and branded her ‘grasping’, the court heard.
In court, Jenna said her life ‘spiraled out of control’ after she began taking drugs, and that her father did little to help.
And although at one point he offered her work at his radio engineering company, she claimed the work involved intricate soldering for which she had no experience.
‘He criticised me all the time until I had to leave,’ she told the court.
But Howe’s sister said he had told him his daughter did nothing but ‘paint her nails’ while at work.
Howe’s sister Tina Tucker (pictured) said her brother’s hostility towards Jenna reached a point where ‘you couldn’t even mention her name in the house’
Howe’s nephews Ross Tucker (left) and Jamie Tucker (right) were in court for the hearing
‘He told me that when she was working she said ‘I don’t need to bother because one day all this will be mine’, which I think made him think about his will,’ Tucker explained.
‘He came home furious and said she was just painting her nails.
‘He tried with her to get her to work but she didn’t want to and he said to me that every time he just felt she was only there because she wanted his money.’
When drafting his last will, he explained he had decided to cut his daughter off because ‘she is lazy, grabbing and bad to my parents’, the court heard, and that he felt ‘jubilation…making sure that (she) never gets a penny of mine’.
Howe was just 55 when he died in 2020 after plunging from a second-floor window in what was described as a ‘tragic accident’.
Jenna said she had done her best to reconcile with her father over the years and was badly rocked by his death.
Her lawyer claimed she had ‘saved for weeks’ to buy lavish flowers for her father’s funeral, adding that she had read a poem during the service after which he was buried with a picture of her.
He said his client was ‘truly traumatised by the way her father treated her’, and was currently ‘destitute’.
She is claiming a £443,000 share of the estate as a ‘reasonable provision’ insisting that her life has been overshadowed by his callous neglect and cruelty during her childhood.
The court heard that she would use it to pay off more than £66,000 in debts, spend £315,000 on a new home, £8,000 on launching her beautician career and £20,000 on a new car.
But Tina Tucker insisted her niece ‘blames everyone for everything, she has never taken responsibility’.
Quizzed on whether her brother would have wanted his daughter to ‘end up unhappy’, she said: ‘I think that he tried with her and then gave up on her, I don’t know.’
She described father and daughter’s relationship as ‘quite toxic’ and admitted that he had made fun of his daughter’s weight.
‘He did that with me and my mother as well, but he used to get cross when Jenna would do nothing about it,’ she claimed.
Howe was a child prodigy who built his first transistor radio at eight and was creating complex AM and FM transmitters by the time he was 15 (Pic: Facebook: Mark Wheeler)
He divorced Jenna’s mother when Jenna was two and ‘wasn’t involved that much in her life’
In court, Jenna said her life ‘spiraled out of control’ after she began taking drugs, and that her father did little to help (Pic Facebook)
Jenna is claiming a £443,000 share of the estate as a ‘reasonable provision’ insisting that her life has been overshadowed by her father’s callous neglect and cruelty during her childhood
Her brother’s hostility towards Jenna reached a point where ‘you couldn’t even mention her name in the house’, she recalled.
‘He didn’t like her, Roger wasn’t involved that much in her life and had chosen to walk away.’
She also disclosed that she has already spent £150,000 in lawyers’ fees fighting her niece in court, including a previous challenge brought by Jenna over the terms of Roger’s will which ultimately ended in settlement.
Roger’s estate has dwindled since his death, she said, adding: ‘the estate has had a lot to deal with’.
And asked by Jenna’s barrister whether she has ‘an axe to grind in respect of Jenna’, she replied: ‘Have you seen what she has done to my family?
‘Why wouldn’t I have an axe to grind?’
The hearing continues.
