Island Murder Conviction Overturned

April 15, 2003 -- William Labrador felt like he was beginning his life anew last week, after a British court ruling freed him from a jail cell in Tortola, three years after he arrived on the picturesque Caribbean island for a vacation with his buddies.

"It's time to go live my life again, which thank God was not taken from me," Labrador, a 39-year-old former Manhattan financial consultant, said after he was released from jail.

Labrador was convicted in May 2001 in the death of former model and up-and-coming artist Lois McMillen, 34, of Middlebury, Conn. Prosecutors in Tortola, which is part of the British Virgin Islands, said that McMillen drowned from someone holding her head under water.

But on April 7, the Privy Council in London, the highest court in the British Commonwealth, overturned Labrador's conviction, and barred prosecutors from retrying him.

Labrador said that he has always been confident that he would be exonerated of a crime he never committed. After his mother, Barbara Labrador, met him in Tortola, and he was released, one of his first acts as a free man was to take a swim.

"I put on my suit right then and there and jumped in the ocean," Labrador told Good Morning America. "That's when I finally felt my freedom. Being able to do that without someone turning a key on me."

A Trip to Paradise Gone Awry

Meanwhile, the mystery of McMillen's death remains so, and the court ruling is the latest chapter in a case that reads like a movie script.

It all began with a two-week vacation in an island paradise of Tortola for four best buddies: Labrador, publisher Alexander Benedetto, construction worker Evan George and law student Michael Spicer. Labrador, Benedetto and George were houseguests at a home owned by Spicer's family.

The trip to paradise took a terrible turn when the four men were charged with killing McMillen. The men had hung around with the aspiring artist, who was also on vacation, with her parents, Russell and Josephine McMillen. But they said that they did not see her the night she disappeared.

Lois McMillen's beaten and bruised body had been found early on the morning of January 15, 2000, along the island's rocky southern shore.

Court and police documents have revealed few signs of any motive for McMillen's killing. Although there were signs of a struggle, investigators said there was no evidence of robbery or rape.

"They drove us to the morgue, and we made an identification of Lois — which was not very pleasant — as you can imagine," Russell McMillen said in an ABCNEWS interview two years ago. "Swollen face — beaten — bad."

His wife, Josephine McMillen was beside herself with grief and shock.

"It was so unbelievable — it was like — I could hardly believe it," Josephine said.

Shaky Evidence

William Labrador and his friends were questioned, initially just as witnesses. But when police noticed their sandy shoes and a cut on Labrador's nose, they were arrested.

From the start, there was little physical evidence linking the four to the crime. There were no witnesses, and a red stain on one of the men's shirts turned out to be barbecue sauce, not blood. Similarly, Labrador's tell-tale "cut" that police had been using as evidence turned out to be sunburn.

After nearly eight hours of deliberation, a jury dismissed charges against all of the men except Labrador. The British Caribbean territory automatically imposes a life imprisonment sentence for murder.

A Jailhouse Snitch?

Labrador's conviction was based largely on the word of Jeffrey Plante, a convicted scam artist who said he overheard Labrador confess while in custody. Critics say Plante was an unreliable jailhouse snitch, who was cutting a deal to avoid charges back in the United States.

Later, it was the "cell confession," that the higher court pointed to in its ruling.

Barbara Labrador says she thinks local police concentrated on her son and his friends because they wanted to protect their tourism industry.

"It's big business," she said. "It's why police never looked for any other suspects. The idea that a local person might have been responsible is something the police didn't want to address."

The McMillens didn't want to give a new statement, but last week, Josephine McMillen spoke to a New York newspaper.

"All I can say is that we're very disappointed," McMillen told Newsday. "As far as we're concerned, it's over. We're just going to try to put all of these three years behind us and move on."