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In 1999, Michael Abram scaled a perimeter wall of Friar Park, the home of George Harrison. Abram smashed one of the gothic mansion’s windows and yelled for George to come down. When the former Beatle did, he and Abram tussled. George sustained multiple stab wounds and would’ve died if not for his wife’s heroic actions.
However, how did Abram breach Friar Park’s heavy defenses in the first place?
Friar Park stepped up its security following John Lennon’s death
In 1980, Mark David Chapman murdered George’s fellow Beatle John Lennon in front of his New York City apartment. Suddenly, the tragedy made the remaining Beatles worry about their safety, including George. Although he didn’t exactly reveal his former bandmate’s death concerned him.
In a 1987 interview, George was eerily calm about his safety following John’s death. “Everybody likes to say, ‘OK, one of your best friends got assassinated, so surely you must be nervous about being assassinated too,’” George continued. “You know, I like to take care, but I don’t walk around fearing for my life.”
George didn’t think anyone would want to murder him too. “I don’t think anybody could be bothered killing me,” he said. “What’s the point of killing me? There’s nothing. I don’t feel that important.”
However, George’s actions spoke louder than words. Friend Michael Palin said, “For a while afterwards, George was extremely concerned about his own safety. There’s plenty of cranks out there who think carbon copy shooting. ‘Maybe we can get two or three of them now.’
“All those nasty things, which you sort of laughed at before Lennon’s death, suddenly must have become rather more serious. I think it was a bit more difficult to get in to see George for a while after that.”
The Guardian added, “The murder prompted the band’s surviving members to take elaborate security precautions. George Harrison was reported to have spent more than £1m protecting from intruders the Oxfordshire mansion he has lived in since 1971.
“He was given local council permission to place razor wire along the perimeter of the 34 acre property. Infrared sensors, security lighting, CCTV and electronic gates were installed. The cameras connected to a control room in the 15 bed room property and the alarm system linked to a nearby police station.”
However, George’s precautions didn’t work.
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Abram was still able to breach security at Friar Park and attack George
George was wrong to think no one would want to murder him. However, he was even worse at not checking how his security was holding up.
The Guardian wrote, “Henley-on-Thames residents said fences were sometimes in disrepair, while the thick shrubbery surrounding the estate offered cover to intruders.”
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Thanks to Friar Park’s partially weak defenses, Abram scaled a perimeter wall and walked up the drive at around 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 30, 1999. According to Beatles Bible, George had security cameras positioned by the main gates and the back entrance, but “the boundary fence in parts of the grounds was in a state of such disrepair that it was easy for an intruder to gain access.”
Abram, a 33-year-old man with mental illness, threw a statue through one of the windows and called George down. George shouldn’t have gone.
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The former Beatle almost died in the attack
In Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World, George’s wife, Olivia, explained, “This guy was saying, ‘Get down here, get down here.’ ‘What do you want?’ He said, ‘You know what I want.’ It was just horrible.
“It was just like this voice from the bowels of hell, and then he just tore up the stairs. He was in a florid psychotic state, and he was tall and young… and this man was on top of George, trying to kill him.”
Abram stabbed George multiple times until Olivia hit him over the head with a poker. Olivia continued, “I could see the blood spreading down his blonde hair, and then he got up, and he chased me. He had me around the neck, and George got up and jumped on his back. And he’d already been stabbed.”
George managed to pin Abram down until the police arrived. Later, in the hospital, George and Olivia couldn’t believe what had happened.
Olivia said, “The next day, George said, ‘You know, I was lying there, and I was thinking, I can’t believe it, after everything that’s happened to me, I’m gonna be murdered. I’m being murdered in my own home.
“‘Since I’m being murdered and I’m going to die, I better start letting go of this life, and I better start doing what I’ve been practicing to do my whole life so that I can leave my body the way I want to.’ He was so defiant and so determined. Nothing was gonna stop him from leaving his body and leaping as high as he could go.”
However, Olivia said that her husband willed himself to live. She told the Associated Press, “He was a very defiant person in that sense — I’m not going to die like that. He was thinking that at the time, actually. After everything I’ve been through, I’m going to die like this?”
Despite how their security measures failed them, Olivia considered that night “a victory, not a loss” because George eventually got to leave his body the way he wanted to, “something that he regretted that John Lennon didn’t have the chance to do.”
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