EXCLUSIVE Ex-wife of super rich equity boss was fighting her celebrity antiques dealer fiance for their £2.7m 18th century London home when she fell to her death from tower block

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

A mother who fell to her death from a city centre apartment block was embroiled in a bitter legal fight with her celebrity antiques dealer fiancé over their £2.7million London home.
Rachel O'Hare, 49, was suing her ex-lover Owen Pacey, 60, for ownership of the five-storey Georgian mansion, in the trendy area of Spitalfields, before she died.
According to court documents seen by the Mail, she claims she paid for the property and it was rightfully hers.
Ms O'Hare alleged that Mr Pacey, a former squatter and self-made antique fireplace expert who counts Mick Jagger, Naomi Campbell, Kate Winslet and Orlando Bloom among his clients, had locked her out of the luxury home.
She says he stopped her from collecting her belongings, refused to pay any bills and threatened to 'trash' the interior, which is packed with beautiful artwork, ornate Italian chandeliers and expensive designer furniture.
The couple, who split acrimoniously in May last year, were due to go head to head over the property at a High Court trial in the next few months.
But just four days after the most recent hearing in the case, at Leeds Combined Court, on June 26, Ms O'Hare was found dead.
The exact details of what happened during the costs and case management hearing are unknown, but on June 30 her body was discovered on the pavement next to an apartment complex, in Manchester city centre, where she was living.
Police said there are no suspicious circumstances and an inquest into her death is due to open next week.
In a statement to the court, Ms O'Hare claimed Mr Pacey persuaded her to buy the elegant 18th Century house, in Wilkes Street, east London, in their joint names, in June 2021.
She took out a loan and also used the proceeds of her divorce settlement from ex-husband, Steve O'Hare, 50, a Cheshire-based millionaire investment manager, with whom she had three teenage children, to pay for it.
At that time, she and Mr Pacey had been together for less than a year following a whirlwind romance after meeting at his high-end fireplace showroom, Renaissance, which is based in a former Victorian pub, in Shoreditch, east London.
Legal papers seen by MailOnline show that when the former couple bought the house together in 2021, they both signed an agreement specifying that if one of them were to die, ownership of the house would pass to the surviving partner
The documents, drawn up by the solicitors who had handled the purchase of the historic Spitalfields house, had offered Mr Pacey and Ms O'Hare two options: they could either each own a specified proportion of the whole property or they could jointly own the whole with full ownership reverting to the surviving partner if the other predeceased them.
Because they chase the latter option, the documents, signed on 1st August 2021, mean Owen Pacey became the sole owner of the £2.7 million 18th property in London following Rachel O'Hare's sudden death.
In a newspaper interview while they were still a couple, Mr Pacey claimed it was love at first sight when they first met.
'She bought a table,' he said. 'That was it, as soon as I saw her.'
Ms O'Hare said Mr Pacey, who was brought up in a council flat in gritty Bethnal Green and left school at 14 with no qualifications, promised to pay her his share of the four-bedroomed property within two years, once he had sold the £1.2million maisonette above the shop that he owned.
'The first defendant (Mr Pacey) said he had no money to contribute when the property was purchased but would be able to pay the claimant for his share in due course,' legal documents said.
To give her peace of mind, Ms O'Hare said Mr Pacey also agreed to put half of his fireplace business, worth around £5million, in her name until he secured the monies.
She also claimed they agreed to share the cost of renovating the house – they spent £14,000 on radiator valves alone – and, if he didn't pay his share or they split, it would revert back to her ownership.
Mr Pacey gave her paperwork to sign, which persuaded her he was arranging the legal formalities, and also sent her reassuring texts, saying: 'You are on the title deed either of the flat or shop,' she said.
Steve O'Hare (left) is co-managing partner of Equistone Partners Europe. Tributes have poured in for Rachel (right) who co-founded a charity for victims of domestic violence
Shortly before Christmas, in 2022, the couple got engaged and Mr Pacey did 'gift' Ms O'Hare a 50 per cent share in the three-bedroomed maisonette.
He moved into the newly renovated Wilkes Street property and told a journalist: 'I used to dream about living in Spitalfields. To actually live there now – I've never been so happy.'
But Ms O'Hare remained in Mere, Cheshire, with her three school-age children and 10 months later, in October 2023, the couple's 'turbulent' relationship started hitting the rocks.
Ms O'Hare discovered Mr Pacey had never formalised her 50 per cent stake in his business and they began arguing regularly over money.
She claimed she had ended up paying the lion's share of the house refurbishment when he failed to pay builders' fees.
She also alleged Mr Pacey was 'controlling' and instructed lawyers to begin legal action against him.
'The relationship between the claimant (Ms O'Hare) and the first defendant (Mr Pacey) was turbulent,' Ms O'Hare's claim said. 'Incidents led to temporary separations and there was a final and unequivocal parting in May 2024.
'The claimant contends that the cause of the breakdowns was the first defendant's controlling and abusive behaviour, which led to the involvement of the police.'
In a defence statement also submitted to the court, Mr Pacey denied persuading Ms O'Hare, a respected fundraiser who set up a domestic abuse charity providing toiletries for women living in refuges, to buy the house in their joint names.
He said she did so because they were 'in love' and there was no discussion or agreement about him eventually paying for half of the house or transferring over 50 per cent of his business.
'The parties (Ms O'Hare and Mr Pacey) were going to get married and there was just no discussion about who owned what,' his defence document said.
Mr Pacey, who once described being made homeless and forced to live in a squat in King's Cross after having his first flat repossessed in the 1980s as the 'most traumatic thing I've ever been through,' also denied being controlling.
He said they had only argued seriously twice - both times when Ms O'Hare had been drunk, in Rye, Kent, in the summer of 2023 and the night before they were departing to New York in May 2024.
He also denied not allowing Ms O'Hare access to the property, now estimated to be worth in excess of £3.2m, or not paying bills or threatening to trash it.
He claimed he paid £70,000 towards the house renovation and provided most of the furniture from his shop.
He had also installed six Italian marble fireplaces, worth £350,000, and claimed Ms O'Hare had organised glossy magazine features to show off and promote the 2,700sq ft house, which they planned to rent out for use in £1,000-a-day photo shoots.
According to his statement, dated February this year, he wanted to get the maisonette and the Georgian home valued, so that he could buy her out of both properties.
When approached by the Mail, Mr Pacey refused to discuss his legal dispute with his former fiancee except to say: 'I worshipped the ground Rachel walked on.'
He added that Ms O'Hare had been suffering from poor mental health in the weeks leading up to her death and had recently been treated in hospital.
Mr Pacey said: 'I'm suffering with my own mental health. I don't want to be here without her.'