A Mystery In Paradise

The shoreline on the island of Tortola is beautiful and untouched with the kind of purity that only money can buy. In this Caribbean haven for the privileged, life is usually serene. But on the morning of January 15th, 2000 a passerby came across a shocking scene. The battered body of a woman lying at the water's edge. It was Lois McMillen, dead at the age of 32. The beautiful daughter of a rich American businessman. Within days four young American men, two the sons of millionaires, were accused of the crime. Rich American victim, rich American suspects, and a police force up against money and privilege. The murder of Lois McMillen shocked the island. There was blood on the gorgeous beaches of Tortola.

When Lois McMillen was killed, no one could imaging why anyone would want her dead. Lois lived quietly off a trust fund with no enemies. But wherever she went she attracted attention. She was a very sexy woman. When she walked into a room she would be noticed by everyone. Her Mother and Father say they tried to get her to tone her appearance with no success. Even as a child she liked Marilyn Monroe, who was her idol. She spent some time in Los Angeles and one the periphery of that business.She appeared in a couple films as a stand in. On the outside she wanted to be a movie star but if you looked closer, she was shy vulnerable uncertain young woman.

Lois McMillen was a woman full of contradictions. She dressed to get attention but she was frightened of men and their capacity for violence. The one place she felt safe was the island of Tortola. When she was very young some friends of her parents, Russell and Josephine McMillen, told them about the Island of Tortola. Lois loved Tortola. She was about 8 years old when her parents first brought her there. From then on it was paradise to her and she felt very safe there.

With a population of only 20,000 people and almost no violent crime, Tortola drew thousands of wealthy American tourists who built vacation homes there. A British Territory run by British law under a British Governor, it was a throw back to an earlier more innocent time. The island survives on tourism mainly people coming for the beaches, the marinas, and the sailing. The locals don't really want the tourists there. They survive on their money and their generosity and their tips but they are very happy when they go home. There is something of a sense of uneasiness there.

In December 1999, Lois McMillen arrived on the Island of Tortola to celebrate the New Year. The Island was full of vacationing Americans. She visited the Island often and drive around in her Father's Jeep and was a familiar face in bars like The Jolly Roger. The owner of the Jolly Roger, Louis Schwartz, says he used to enjoy seeing Lois come in. He says she would come in dressed like a glamour girl with ruby red lipstick wearing bustiers and toreador pants all in loud reds and yellows.He says she was approached by a lot of men and hormones being what they are it was just natural that men would come on to her. But his perception was that she didn't come to the Jolly Roger to meet and go home with a man.

On the night of January 12th, a Wednesday, Lois went out bar hopping with an old friend of hers and her three buddies. The four men were staying at Zebra house, next door to her parents and she gave them a lift home. She hit the bars hard that night. On Friday January 14th, Lois went out alone. She told her parents she was going out for an hour or so to listen to some music. They tried to discourage her but to no avail. She was hoping that night to run into somebody that night to run into somebody she could go sailing with.

Louis Schwartz says that on that last night came in alone around 8:00 PM. He saw Lois leave alone around 9:30 or 10:00 in her Father's Jeep. He is sure that no one, either walking or in a vehicle followed her. In the meantime her parents went to sleep but by midnight she hadn't come home. They were not overly concerned at that time. Then they kept getting up throughout the whole night and walk downstairs and see no car and began to wonder if something might have been wrong. By morning they were very concerned.

Scottish Detective John Johnston has been the hired to help the small police force as a final job before retirement. The next morning as he is driving through a small town on the island he intercepted a radio message that the body of a white woman had been found on the shore down at the west end. He knows immediately that this is not right and that something is very wrong. He finds Lois lying face up just at the edge of the water. Everything pointed to a violent act having been committed against this woman as a result of which she had died from. He felt sure they were dealing with a very brutal mugger. Now cops develop instincts and Johnston had been a cop a long time. But the last thing on his mind was that someone from Lois' world might be a killer.

John Johnston and the police knew right away it was murder. A local woman said she heard Lois' final words. Beulah Romney says she heard Lois screaming an begging for mercy for three or four minutes but could not see anything because it was very dark. The McMillians had called the police to report their daughter missing. Sargent Anderson Blackman was sent to their Villa to see if the body that had been found was Lois'. He was already sure it was Lois because he had known Lois but her parents couldn't recognize her because she was so badly beaten. The McMillens told the police that Lois had spent the last few nights with the four men who were staying next door at Zebra house.

The McMillens had been trying all night to call the boys to see if they knew where their daughter was but there was no answer. The Villa was owned by the millionaire parent's of one of the four boys, Micheal Spicer, a friend of Lois'. Louis Schwartz says Spicer is a nice guy who sometimes could get loud and boisterous. One to speak his own mind. Like Lois, Michael Spicer lived off a trust fund. He often told people he was a law student. The truth was he had graduated years earlier but couldn't pass the bar exam. But he was about to get a lot closer to the justice than he had ever imagined.

Michael Spicer had three friends staying with him including his lover Evan George, a former drug user and street kid from Oregon, Alexander Benadetto who was the 35 year old son of a multimillionaire of a New York publisher who had had a brief affair with Lois three years earlier. The last man staying at Zebra house was William Labrador who had grown up in exclusive but his own family was less privileged. He and Benadetto were starting a modeling agency with $350,000 whom he had borrowed from Benadetto's Father. This modeling agency was like Michael Spicer's law career, it had never really gotten off the ground. People who knew the Benadettos said they spent most of their money on Limousines and nightclubs.

Louis Schwartz says that what the four men and Lois did in their private times was what they did and was nobody else's business. The police thought that the four men might be able to help them trace Lois' last movements. Police Sargent Anderson Blackman went to Zebra house to ascertain when they had last seen Lois. Michael Spicer told him that he had last seen Lois on Thursday. He told the boys that they had just recovered a body in the sea on the west end of the island and they are wondering whether or not it was her. At that point in time Spicer asks if she's dead, and Anderson is thinking how does he know she is dead if he doesn't even know it is her. When Sargent Blackman told the men that had ID'd Lois there reaction made them even more suspicious.

Back at the murder scene, Deputy Police Commissioner John Johnson coordinated the murder scene. The body had been discovered close to a local police station. It appeared as if Lois McMillen had been fighting someone as if trying to reach safety there. Near the body there was a necklace with a broken chain and a can of mace was found. They also found her shoes about ten yards apart some twenty or so yards from her body. Lois wasn't killed instantly. She knew she was in serious trouble and she was fleeing for her life.

The police return to Zebra house to carry out a search. They found we clothing on the shirts and on one shirt what appeared to be blood stains. They found wet shoes which appeared to have blood stains on them. The police wanted explanations for all those things. The police brought the four men in for further questioning. Each man was taken to a separate police station on the island. The men all told the same story, they hadn't seen Lois the night of the murder. Michael Spicer said what was on his shirt and shoes wasn't blood it was barbeque sauce. The police photographed Benadetto's arm and also his leg where he had scratches, thinking this may have come as a result with Lois.

But Alex Benadetto said he could explain all that. He got the scratches while he had been out hiking with the other men. The police also photograph what they also think is an abrasion on William Labrador's nose. Labrador said it was sunburn. They decided to search the men. At that point they find an ATM receipt. It was dated at 11:15 the night of the murder. It was only at that point that they admitted having been anywhere near the West End of the Island. Of course it could be that they weren't asked either.

The ATM where they had drawn money was next to a bar named Pussers. It is directly across a small bay from the Jolly Roger where Lois McMillen spent her last evening alive. It is also about a two minute drive from the Jolly Roger. The men's story was that they were going to go to a bar named Keatos. A Taxi driver picked them up and they drove to the ATM machine. Along the way William Labador was tired and asked to be dropped off. He says he spent the rest of the night home alone watching television including a sports event. The men's key alibi witness was their Taxi driver, David Blidon also known as Salo.

Salo also has a conviction for drug trafficking and was uncooperative when approached by the police. He gave a very brief statement but has said nothing since. The police were concerned because they didn't know very much about these men and they had no motive if any. All they knew was they had four rich Americans with passports and had no idea if these men would take off or not and they didn't want to chance it so the men are arrested. Five days after their arrest the four men were charged with the murder of Lois McMillen.

When Lois Schwartz heard of the arrest he was stunned. He says they wouldn't harm a fly much less someone who was a good friend of theirs. What possible motive could they have to commit murder number one and to murder such a dear friend number two? The Tortola police had rounded up their suspects in four days. They didn't care how much money these guys had they thought they had caught Lois McMillen's killers. But they had no idea of the storm that was headed their way.

On television the cops take the customers and lean on them to turn on each other. Well this was real life and these guys were perfectly calm and the cops couldn't shake them. They were either innocent or they thought their money would get them out of trouble.

Four days after the murder an autopsy was carried out on the body of Lois McMillen. Her face had been scraped raw. Her blouse was roughed up over her chest. But there were no signs of rape although subsequent tests showed semen in her body. The autopsy found sand deep in Lois lungs indicating she was alive when pushed into the sea. There were thin cuts on her fingers where someone might try to defend themselves from a sharp weapon. Her Father, Russel Mcmillen, says she had a sheet over her when they viewed the body at the morg and that her head was tilted all the way back. He says he was numb. He wondered how could this happen to this beautiful person, because her face was a mess.

Meanwhile the four men are being held without bail at the islands only prison. It houses 67 inmates and has a relaxed regime. It sits on a hilltop on the east end of Tortola and from many of the jail cells the inmates can see the Atlantic ocean. There is basketball and other games. They want the inmates to be comfortable and not be a problem. There is no point to escape there is no place to go.

In America the murder was becoming a big media story. Supporters of the four men said there was no evidence against them. The police said the evidence was still being studied. The Island is too small to have a forensics lab so they sent the evidence to Barbados. Two months went by. The lab in Barbados decided on their own to send some of the evidence off to Jamaica. The exhibits were now out of the hands of the Tortola police and subject to even more delays. The delays outraged the families of the four men. They called their lawyers in New York and said to look into this problem.

Lawyers from Tortola were brought in but members of William Labador's family started a media campaign. William Labador's Mother spoke out on American Television. From prison, William gave a television interview that was picked up nationally. The men's lawyers called for a boycott of the island until they were released. But on Tortola the efforts to influence events backfired. The pressure made the Governor, Frank Savage more determined than ever to see the case go to court. He felt it was a very important case foe the people of Tortola and although he didn't say so it is thought that he was worried about the problem of what an unsolved murder would do to tourism.

By Easter, the men were spending their fourth month in prison and they were beginning to show signs of strain. Labador and Benadetto were fighting and the police decided to separate them. Labador's new cellmate was a man named Jeffery Plant. All the cops had was circumstantial evidence. The four men couldn't prove they had done it and the cops couldn't prove they had. Jeffery Plant was about to learn something that would blow the case wide open.

As the four men stayed lock up their solid front began to show signs of weakening. They weren't exactly tough guys having lived a life of privilege. In prison the pressure began to get to the and that gave the police their chance. Benadetto didn't like the fact that Labador had gotten his own lawyer. While the evidence was being analyzed at lab off the island. Labador's new cellmate, Jeffery Plant, says he and Labador were together seven days a week. He felt he had built up a rapport with Labador and one one Good Friday he says he was doing some praying when Labador asked him if he thought God would forgive him if he was involved in killing someone.

Although he say he felt uncomfortable with that question it prompted him to as Labador directly if he was involved in killing the McMillen girl to which he answered yes. He said that they were driving from the west end and they were arguing and she tried to pull into the police station and he prevented that. One thing led to another and the argument got violent and out of control and he dragged her into the ocean and put his foot on the back of her neck and drowned her. He said that it was over money and that she was no good.

It was just the evidence the police needed. But there was a problem. Jeffery Plant was a convicted con man with a long record of fraud including a 45 year sentence for theft in Texas. He had violated his parole to travel to Tortola with his 10th wife and once on the island he got into more trouble. Plant was in prison in Tortola because his 10th wife complained to the police that he was illegally using her credit cards. And there was another little problem. Earlier he had claimed he had witnessed another cell mate's confession which had turned out to be false.

Louis Schwartz says Jeffery Plant is a criminal and a sleazeball who has absolutely no creditability. Even John Johnston says Jeffery Plant is a complete fraudster and his whole business is to get people to talk to him so that he can find their weaknesses and take advantage of them. However the detail that Jeffery Plant gave the police could not have been known to him so the police tend to believe him. There was one detail that Plant didn't give. The motive for the murder but what it might have been were flying around the island. Lois' affair with Benadetto, the money he and Benadetto owed his father, even an unsolved murder on Tortola that some people claimed Lois knew too much about.

It was now nine months since Lois McMillen's murder. Finally the long awaited results from the lab came back from Jamaica. It was bad news for the police. There was no hard evidence linking Lois death to the four men. Not only that but five important pieces of evidence had mysteriously disappeared. The case was close to collapsing. If the police couldn't come up with something the men the police believed killed Lois McMillen would walk away free.

A year after the murder of Lois the police were trying to gather enough evidence to convict the four men accused of the murder Lois McMillen. Pressure from the supporters of the four suspects in America mounted. All along the police had been saying wait for the evidence to come back. Now it was back and it didn't prove thing. The Governor of the island looked outside for help. It was time to call in Scotland Yard.

Detectives from Scotland Yard flew to Tortola. They said the strongest evidence was the suspect's sneakers. The shoes were sent to a leading British forensics geologist, Professor Ken Pie. His findings gave the prosecution new hope. He said the the sand on the shoes from Michael Spicer came from the crime scene. The police had what they had been looking for. A solid physical clue.

Fifteen months after the murder of Lois McMillen, the trial could finally begin. The parent's of the four men watched as the four men accused of killing their daughter arrived at the courthouse. They all pleaded innocent.The team from Scotland Yard, including Professor Ken Pie flew in to give evidence. Professor had said that there was an 85% chance that the sand on Michael Spicer's shoes came from the crime scene and that it is unlikely that it came from anywhere else on the island. According to John Johnston the beach is not actual sand it is coral limestone and you don't get that sand on your shoe by accident.

The police and prosecution were counting on Pie but once he was on the stand he disappointed them. He now claims that he can't tell you it came from that particular spot or when it came from that spot. It was a bombshell for the prosecution. Five weeks into the trial the Judge told three of the men that there wasn't enough evidence to convict them and set them free. Mrs. Labador whose son was the only one who wasn't released turned to a reporter and said "three down, one to go". Apparently the Jury was not happy that the Judge let the three men go and seemed to be afraid that his decision might unfairly target Labador. Forty eight hours later the three men, Benadetto, George and Spicer were back in the US. They couldn't get off Tortola fast enough. Labador was left behind. He was going to have to face the music alone.

Now Labador had to take the stand and convince the Jury that Jeffery Plant was lying about his jailhouse confession. On the stand Labador came off as arrogant. And there were also some questions he wouldn't answer. When asked about his modeling business he says that subject is covered by a confidentially agreement. The trial was coming down to whether the Jury believed Labador or Jeffery Plant. It was a case of He said, he said. The smooth well to do business man verses the smooth talking convicted con man. During closing arguments to use their good West Indian common sense.

After deliberating for five hours the Jury was deadlocked 7-2. The Judge asked them try to reach a unanimous verdict. A court reporter said he felt some hostility from the Jury. They were still upset that the first three were set free. Two hours later they returned with a verdict. William Labador was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to life in prison. But that isn't the end of the story.

The McMillens felt they had gotten the right man based on Jeffery Plant's story which they admit was the only piece of evidence the prosecution had. William Labador began serving his sentence in Her Majesty's Prison Tortola where he took an interest in gardening. He enjoyed showing the other inmates how to grow plants and flowers and vegetables. As it turned out Labador was really good at gardening. So good in fact that he was allowed out to go to a local community garden where he and the Governor were seen together smiling, shaking hands and posing for pictures.

Labador continued to maintain his innocence and his family mounted a campaign to free him. They took the case to the high British Court asking that the verdict be set aside on the basis of insufficient evidence. Right away the Justices were asking a lot of questions about how the prosecution could even go to trial solely on the basis of an informant without any corroborating evidence. They said they didn't like informants anyway especially one who had been convicted and sentenced to 45 years for fraud.

On April 7th 2003, sent down it's ruling. They proclaimed William Labador a free man. The evidence to convict him had been Jeffery Plant's testimony. And they found Jeffery Plant impossible to believe. Just before 6:00 PM on April 17th William Labador was released. He immediately flew home to South Hampton Long Island. He is currently living with his parents and working on Landscape projects. John Johnston says he has no doubt that William Labador is responsible for Lois McMillen's murder but then again he said that about each of the men one at a time.

The police made a classic rush to judgement. They thought they saw evidence where there wasn't any. They expected the men to crack under interrogation and they didn't. The McMillens are devastated by the decision of course. She was Josephine's only child who says she will never get over it and Russell says he misses all the things that might have been. For them there is no comfort. One by one the men accused of killing their daughter were set free by the British justice system. No one else was ever charged. Whoever killed Lois is still free. Josephine McMillen died of a rare lung disease on June 29th, 2003. And the Mystery of the Lois McMillen's murder lives on..