Murder in Paradise

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Speaker 3 A special 48 hours mystery.

Speaker 3 Four young Americans, accustomed to the good life, were enjoying a taste of paradise.

Speaker 5 They were on vacation and they were partying.

Speaker 3 Lois Macmillan, their friend and artist, was also there, spending the holidays with her family at their Caribbean retreat.

Speaker 7 Then, one night, she never came home.

Speaker 8 1230 where is lost.

Speaker 3 The unthinkable. Lois's body was found.

Speaker 10 Something happened when she was out of fear, fleeing from an attacker.

Speaker 3 Even more shocking, the four friends are arrested.

Speaker 3 Charged with murder.

Speaker 7 No witnesses have ever placed these four men with Lois Macmillan that evening.

Speaker 3 Their family say they were framed.

Speaker 11 There is no concrete physical evidence to tie these guys to Lois' death.

Speaker 3 Susan Spencer investigates. Where will the evidence lead?

Speaker 10 You had apparently blood-stained clothing. There were scratch marks on their arms.

Speaker 3 William Labrador, the key defendant, speaks out.

Speaker 14 We do not convict innocent human beings.

Speaker 3 And a dramatic new twist that will turn this case upside down. A 48 Hours Mystery.
Prisoners in Paradise.

Speaker 16 Welcome to 48 Hours Mystery. I'm Leslie Stahl.
Prison is the last place four American friends expected to end up when they set off on a dream vacation. But then this story is full of the unexpected.

Speaker 16 For one thing, it's a case of murder in a place where such a crime is almost unheard of. It's a case where the tide keeps keeps shifting right to the very end.

Speaker 16 And it's all been unfolding in a land where the justice system might seem a little bit foreign, even though some of the world's most respected investigators from Scotland Yard are on the case.

Speaker 16 Susan Spencer reports on how some Americans who went looking for an escape became prisoners in paradise.

Speaker 20 For the villa and yacht set,

Speaker 22 Tortola in the British Virgin Islands Islands is simply paradise.

Speaker 17 A place where the well-healed can mix and mingle and sail and sun on private beaches and private yachts.

Speaker 8 It's been a place of joy.

Speaker 8 We go down with a suitcase of books. We go to the beach, we walk the beach, we snorkel.

Speaker 8 Totally relaxing, nothing to fear. We're away from all the stress.

Speaker 27 For more than 20 years, Josephine and Russell McMillan and their daughter Lois fled the cold winters of Connecticut for their villa here on Tortola.

Speaker 29 Lois liked it?

Speaker 30 She adored her.

Speaker 8 She grew up there.

Speaker 31 My yes.

Speaker 31 And she was well known down there ever since she was a child. She's been going there.

Speaker 32 At the end of 1999, Russell McMillan fell seriously ill. So Lois planned a longer-than-usual holiday stay with her parents.

Speaker 8 She was concerned when she found out about the cancer, that that Christmas would be our last.

Speaker 34 And in fact, it was.

Speaker 32 On the evening of January 14th, 2000, 34-year-old Lois McMillan told her parents she was going to a local hangout to listen to music.

Speaker 37 She never came home.

Speaker 38 And at what point did you begin to get worried?

Speaker 8 Oh, well, starting about 12.31 o'clock, we're up and, you know, looking at our watch and where's lost.

Speaker 32 Early the next morning, frantic, they called the police.

Speaker 31 They had then showed up shortly thereafter. Three of the police

Speaker 31 said to us that a body had been found of a drowned young woman on the other side of the island had been found in the water.

Speaker 32 The body turned out to be that of Lois Macmillan.

Speaker 25 Police believe she was attacked somewhere along this deserted stretch, just a few miles from where she last was seen.

Speaker 26 Her car was found less than a mile away at the ferry dock, handbag and money still inside.

Speaker 44 Police think that after a violent struggle, she broke away from her attacker and took off across this the sea wall, down onto the rocks, leaving behind a trail of personal possessions.

Speaker 35 A gold necklace, a can of mace, a hairclip, one shoe.

Speaker 44 They found her body here in the shallow water, shirt and bra pulled up, her breasts exposed.

Speaker 35 But the medical examiner can't say whether her attacker followed her down there and held her under, or whether, dazed, she simply fell, hit her head, and drowned.

Speaker 47 Find us together, Lord. Find us together, Lord.

Speaker 24 Crime of any kind is rare on Tortola.

Speaker 48 News of this murder shocked the island.

Speaker 49 This is something which is so far away from the norm here.

Speaker 32 Especially because this victim seemed not to have an enemy in the world.

Speaker 5 She liked people and she had friends around. She knew a lot of people on the island.

Speaker 49 A warm, gentle, very nice person.

Speaker 23 Lois was the Macmillan's only child, clearly their pride and joy.

Speaker 30 Oh, these are sweet. Oh, look at this.

Speaker 44 Oh, what a great picture.

Speaker 30 Now, how old would she have been in that one?

Speaker 8 Maybe about three years old.

Speaker 33 As an adult, Lois had drifted through careers, once an aspiring actress, then an artist, and graduate of the Parsons School of Design.

Speaker 8 It's a happy painting.

Speaker 24 She'd recently been living at home in Connecticut.

Speaker 8 This is Lois's bedroom.

Speaker 30 Oh, you've got to tell me about that. That looks like Salvador Dolly.

Speaker 8 It does to me, too. It's just a whimsical painting that she did.

Speaker 19 That artistic whimsy often showed up in outlandish costumes.

Speaker 8 Well, that's their freedom outfit. This is a very conservative community that we live in.
She was quite flamboyant for Middlebury, Connecticut, but they quite got used to Lois.

Speaker 34 But her sometimes quirky behavior did not provide either a motive or any clues to her murder.

Speaker 19 So the police started retracing Lois' steps the night before her body was found.

Speaker 49 Lois came in that evening somewhere around eight o'clock and changed.

Speaker 48 She was by herself? She was by herself.

Speaker 41 Lois Schwartz owns the Jolly Roger and except for her killer may be the last person to have seen Lois alive.

Speaker 49 Somewhere between maybe 8.45 and 9.30 I was looking downstairs and I saw her drive out by herself.

Speaker 49 No one followed her, no cars, no people, no nothing, because I was there for about five to ten minutes.

Speaker 25 No one knows where or when Lois met up with her killer that night.

Speaker 38 Guys at bars always know what people are thinking. What are people here on Tortola thinking?

Speaker 49 They're thinking that the person who drove her car down to the ferry dock did it and split the island that morning on the first ferry.

Speaker 42 But that is not what the police are thinking.

Speaker 32 Just hours after Lois' body is found, they put four suspects behind bars for murder.

Speaker 35 Four vacationing Americans more used to country clubs than prison cells.

Speaker 42 They are Michael Spicer, a well-to-do neighbor of Lois's on Tortola, and his 23-year-old friend, Evan George.

Speaker 45 Alex Benedetto, the son of a wealthy publisher who had dated Lois a few years before.

Speaker 52 And William Labrador, his best friend and partner in a New York modeling agency.

Speaker 44 News of the arrest electrified the island.

Speaker 35 Spicer and Labrador are well known here, and their friends and family insist they are innocent.

Speaker 57 They're keeping these guys with absolutely no evidence.

Speaker 33 But these four suspects are about to find out that on the island of Tortola, different rules apply.

Speaker 13 When we come back, how out of the clear blue sky are you falsely accusing not only one person, but all four of us?

Speaker 37 William Labrador.

Speaker 9 Of murder.

Speaker 53 On trial for murder.

Speaker 44 Speaks out.

Speaker 26 Exciting things happen on Tortola,

Speaker 34 but murder usually isn't one of them.

Speaker 12 There is no evidence whatsoever. that associates my son Alexander Benedetto to the death of this poor girl.

Speaker 45 For wealthy New York publisher Victor Benedetto's 37-year-old son Alex, Christmas 1999 ended here.

Speaker 32 In Her Majesty's prison, he found himself charged with killing Lois Macmillan.

Speaker 12 A year and a half with no evidence whatsoever. They're not animals.
You don't keep people 23 hours a day locked in like criminals before you prove that they're criminals.

Speaker 34 The one consolation, Alex is not alone.

Speaker 35 Also charged are friends Michael Spicer, 39, a rich law school grad from Virginia.

Speaker 42 His companion, 23-year-old Evan George, and Alex's boyhood friend and business partner, William Labrador, 37.

Speaker 11 He starts every letter A-B-D-I-P, which means another beautiful day in paradise.

Speaker 35 Labrador's mother Barbara echoes the outrage of all the families that the four have spent almost 16 months in prison.

Speaker 11 I mean they're come to one of nature's little secrets.

Speaker 11 Well the underbelly of this little secret down on Tortola is it's rotten. You can wind up spending over a year of your life in prison when you are totally innocent.

Speaker 11 and they cannot come up with any evidence to prove otherwise, but they do not have the integrity to say we made a mistake. And that is frightening.

Speaker 11 This is one of my favorite pictures of William checking out the waves.

Speaker 22 William Labrador and Alex Benedetto grew up together.

Speaker 32 Alex spent summers in Tony Southampton, the Long Island resort town where William lived.

Speaker 34 Barbara Labrador says that although William grew up around money, the family was not wealthy.

Speaker 11 The whole Hampton panache colors our family. Meanwhile, William had a paperwork when he was 10 years old.
My kids always worked.

Speaker 57 I've always worked.

Speaker 11 We are not rich by a long shot.

Speaker 58 Still, William loved the New York social scene.

Speaker 45 He reveled in working for an agency representing top models.

Speaker 44 And when things didn't work out at the big agency, he and Alex, backed by Alex's dad, started an agency of their own.

Speaker 45 In late 1999, when business was slow, Christmas in Tortola seemed like a great idea.

Speaker 45 Once there, they hooked up with pal Mike Spicer, the third defendant.

Speaker 32 All stayed at Spicer's family villa, Zebra House.

Speaker 5 Mike's kind of larger-than-life person. He's always the center of attention at a party, a great conversationalist, well-read, good-looking,

Speaker 5 and very energetic.

Speaker 42 Justin Cohen is Spicer's best friend.

Speaker 57 In the press, he's been described as, I believe the phrase is, trust fun baby.

Speaker 9 Is that true?

Speaker 5 Well, there's a lot of that going around.

Speaker 9 Certainly. Certainly here.

Speaker 6 Yes, certainly here in Tortola.

Speaker 32 The last defendant was Spicer's other house guest, Evan George, young and handsome.

Speaker 5 Mike really took an interest in Evan and kind of took him under his wing.

Speaker 32 All but Evan George knew the glamorous and eccentric Lois Macmillan.

Speaker 22 She lived just down the hill and loved to go out.

Speaker 45 They all loved to party, especially at places like the Bamba Shack.

Speaker 6 They have a full moon party and they serve this famous bomb punch,

Speaker 6 which is rub and pineapple juice and hallucinogenic mushrooms. So it's quite wild.

Speaker 34 I mean it seems like pretty much they were partying. Yes, they were.

Speaker 5 They were on vacation and they were partying.

Speaker 32 On the two nights before her death, Lois McMillan did go out with the four defendants to several clubs.

Speaker 25 But the men say the night of the murder was different.

Speaker 7 They had dinner at their home.

Speaker 32 Former New York homicide detective Jay Saul Peter has been hired by Alex Benedetto's family.

Speaker 7 They left at approximately 11 o'clock, 11 p.m. when a cab driver by the name of Salo picked him up.

Speaker 7 Salo drove him right over here to an ATM machine where Alex Benedetto took out money at approximately 11.45.

Speaker 38 That's stamped right on the receipt.

Speaker 9 Yes, it is.

Speaker 24 The men's defense is simple.

Speaker 35 They say they never even saw Lois McMillan on the night she died.

Speaker 25 For most of the night, three of the four were together in public places.

Speaker 37 Only William Labrador can't prove what he did that night.

Speaker 45 His friends had dropped him off some distance from Zebra House to walk home after he told them he was tired.

Speaker 13 After spending the whole day hiking since 7:30 in the morning, cooking, figured a 15-hour day of recreation, was more than ready to go home.

Speaker 58 Now, in an interview from Her Majesty's prison, Labrador tells his version of what happened that night.

Speaker 13 Walked back home, got dropped off at Sebastian's, 11:48.

Speaker 44 He says he watched TV and went to bed.

Speaker 13 ESPN tonight, the NFL tonight, and then

Speaker 13 Learning Channel, Area 51, and called it a night. And that was it.

Speaker 13 And here I am.

Speaker 7 No one on the island, no witnesses, have ever placed these four men with Lois McMillan that evening.

Speaker 6 No one.

Speaker 32 No one except the police, who routinely began interviewing Lois's friends.

Speaker 48 Their search for clues led the Tortolin police here to Zebra House, where that afternoon they turned up three pair of wet sandy sneakers and a shirt with a stain on it thought to be blood.

Speaker 48 The police also noticed a small fresh cut on William Labrador's nose.

Speaker 44 He said he got it the previous day while hiking.

Speaker 18 But the officers found their explanations very suspicious and before the day was out they had arrested all four.

Speaker 13 Talk about your soul hitting the floor because that was where you're sitting there, you're helping out.

Speaker 13 You're thinking to yourself, what are they doing? And then, okay, here, we are accusing you of murder. Knock, knock, knock.

Speaker 67 Whoa.

Speaker 7 They have wet sneakers and a scratch on the nose.

Speaker 26 Jay Saul Peters says it was not enough evidence to even think of an arrest.

Speaker 7 You and I could knock on 30 doors right now. If we enter 28 of those homes, we're going to find wet, sandy sneakers.

Speaker 38 They find a stain on a shirt that they believe at that time is blood.

Speaker 56 I mean, you know, it's not like they went in there and there was absolutely nothing here at all.

Speaker 7 What appears to be blood could have been source. It could have been ketchup.

Speaker 7 They put four boys in jail for no reason at all.

Speaker 35 The defendants and their families charged that the police rushed to judgment out of fear that an unsolved murder would hurt Tortola's image.

Speaker 11 They wanted to wrap this up quickly. Arrest somebody, preferably not a local person, and then search for evidence.

Speaker 6 The charge of murder, that's a big charge.

Speaker 12 Do you realize that this charge can bring you for a life imprisonment without parole?

Speaker 34 Are these four apparently clean-cut young men falsely accused, or is there more to this story?

Speaker 68 I asked him whether or not he, in fact, had anything to do with that

Speaker 68 killing of Miss McMillan, and he said yes.

Speaker 56 That's next.

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Speaker 33 More than a year after Lois McMillan's brutal death, her parents finally will see these four Americans tried for her murder.

Speaker 31 We feel there's guilt. That has to be proven.

Speaker 31 The truth will come out.

Speaker 42 But Lois's parents aren't the only confident ones today.

Speaker 11 All the boys are looking forward to today, so we finally can get the truth out of the courtroom.

Speaker 27 Barbara Labrador, here with her daughter Honey.

Speaker 12 They convinced her son's innocence.

Speaker 15 Absolutely no question from day one.

Speaker 40 Hopes the judge simply will dismiss the charges against her son William and his three co-defendants, Evan George, Alex Benedetto, and Michael Spicer.

Speaker 11 They know that we have done everything. Absolutely everything.

Speaker 55 Everything, including hiring a team of high-priced lawyers, six from the Caribbean, and three more from the United States.

Speaker 4 I anticipate that these boys will be released. This case should never have been brought.

Speaker 20 Facing them, the prosecutor, 35-year-old Crown Counsel Terrence Williams.

Speaker 15 Must have been a terrible way to die.

Speaker 46 Terrible way to die for her.

Speaker 32 His case against the defendants is based on an investigation led by Deputy Police Commissioner John Johnston, a Scottish homicide detective with 30 years experience.

Speaker 10 The first thing that I found unusual was that there was a female who appeared to perhaps have drowned, who was lying face upward, which is unusual because because when a person drowns naturally, they would normally be face down.

Speaker 40 From evidence found near the scene...

Speaker 10 We found a shoe quite close to the body. We found another shoe further up the beach.

Speaker 20 Investigators piece together the story of a fight that began in Lois Macmillan's car.

Speaker 15 It seems as if it started with a quarrel in her Jeep and that she suddenly left the Jeep. Because, you know, you found pieces of her necklace in the Jeep.

Speaker 15 and pieces on the street and pieces on the seaside.

Speaker 43 Under British law, cameras are forbidden in the courtroom.

Speaker 20 But as the case progresses, Williams takes the entire court, all nine jurors, the judge, even the defendants, on a dramatic tour of the crime scene.

Speaker 10 Something happened that she was out of fear, fleeing from an attacker.

Speaker 15 She obviously was running. There obviously was a struggle.
She has cups in her hands, which are self-defense cuts. Perhaps grabbing a knife, somebody coming from behind her.

Speaker 15 She obviously went to get her mist from her handbag because it was found on the rocks on the seaside. But she obviously was overpowered.

Speaker 19 Williams believes she was trying to make it to this police station less than 150 yards away from where her body was found.

Speaker 15 She was close enough to a police station but not close enough.

Speaker 19 The jury sees the precise spot where Lois McMillan's desperate struggle ended.

Speaker 15 She was pushed head down into the sand.

Speaker 19 As does her father, who keeps his distance.

Speaker 15 So she was both being drowned and being asphyxiated by the sand.

Speaker 19 Meanwhile, the men Russ McMillan believes murdered his daughter bask in a rare moment outside prison walls.

Speaker 32 Possibly their last for many years to come.

Speaker 19 Authorities think they have a strong, although circumstantial, case.

Speaker 10 You had apparently blood-stained clothing, wet clothing, damp shoes. There were scratch marks on their arms.
One of them had a cut somewhere around about the bridge of their nose.

Speaker 43 The police collected 85 items from the house, clothing, shoes, even nail clippings.

Speaker 15 Their nails all cut quite low, apparently quite recently, and apparently in concert.

Speaker 10 I felt that we had the right people, that one or more, or perhaps even all of them, had been responsible for her death, and that there was circumstantial evidence at that stage.

Speaker 42 And Scotland Yard was even brought in.

Speaker 32 Tests showed that the specks on Michael Spicer's shirt were indeed blood, not barbecue sauce.

Speaker 32 The prosecution says the blood did not come from the defendants, but it could have come from Lois Macmillan. A Scotland Yard geologist also inspected Spicer's sandy shoes.

Speaker 15 15% of the sand on her shoes matches the sand at West End where her body was found.

Speaker 59 Plus, the prosecution says the men's stories were inconsistent.

Speaker 15 The men claim that she was not there in the house with them, but tampons are there. In fact, the deceased, when she was found dead, was wearing a tampon.

Speaker 19 Finally, there's that ATM receipt the defense is using as an alibi.

Speaker 42 Prosecutors say it actually puts the four men in the same area as Lois Macmillan at a crucial time.

Speaker 10 All of these things built up to sort of give a picture that somehow or other she had come into contact with these four men and that one of them or all of them were responsible for the horrible death that she met.

Speaker 24 Ridiculous, says the defense, which calls all this so-called evidence, like sandy shoes on an island, inconclusive and meaningless.

Speaker 11 There is no concrete physical evidence to tie these guys to Lois' death. Not a shred, nothing.

Speaker 59 But the prosecution's case is more than physical evidence.

Speaker 24 Its biggest weapon, testimony about an alleged confession by William Labrador.

Speaker 68 Mr. Labrador asked me, did I think that God would forgive him

Speaker 68 if he had anything to do with killing the girl?

Speaker 27 Jeffrey Plant, a Texas businessman in jail awaiting trial for passing bad checks, says that Labrador unburdened himself when the two were cellmates.

Speaker 68 I asked him whether or not he had anything to do with killing of Miss McMillan, and he said yes.

Speaker 68 That they were in an argument driving along and that she attempted to pull into a police station here on the island and he prevented that and one thing led to another and that he had taken her and and

Speaker 68 drowned her by putting his foot on the back of her neck.

Speaker 23 An account that directly matched the autopsy report.

Speaker 10 The information that he provided was information which we term as someone having unique knowledge of a crime that could only have been known to the person who actually perpetrated the crime.

Speaker 32 For the authorities, Plant pulled the case all together.

Speaker 24 He fingered the killer and even provided a motive.

Speaker 68 Yeah, and I asked him why, and what he told me is that it was over money and that she wasn't any good.

Speaker 30 He told you with absolute clarity that he had killed Lois McMillan.

Speaker 6 Absolute clarity, sister.

Speaker 56 Put his foot on her neck.

Speaker 36 Correct. Until she drowned.
Yes.

Speaker 19 The prosecution rests after three weeks. But even before the defense starts its case, it takes a surprising turn.

Speaker 56 That's next.

Speaker 16 For more than a year, four American men had been held prisoner on the remote Caribbean island of Tortola, accused of murdering their friend Lois Macmillan.

Speaker 16 Since it's British territory, Tortola's justice system does have a lot in common with our own, but there are some key differences.

Speaker 16 Keep in mind that a judge can give an opinion on the evidence when instructing the jury. The prosecution's circumstantial murder case has the families of the four defendants in an uproar.

Speaker 16 They're convinced it's a frame-up. Susan Spencer picks up the story with the defense preparing for its turn in court, hoping to keep one year in prison from becoming life.

Speaker 40 For 475 days, William Labrador and his three co-defendants have watched beautiful tortolin sunsets from their prison cells.

Speaker 13 You're in an environment where you cannot do anything about it. And the anger that could be derived where there's no release point starts eating at you as a whole.

Speaker 71 But tomorrow could change that.

Speaker 26 Tomorrow could bring freedom.

Speaker 32 It took the prosecution three weeks to wrap up its case.

Speaker 24 Now the defense wants the judge to dismiss all the charges, claiming there just isn't enough evidence implicating any of the four men in Lois McMillan's murder.

Speaker 32 But the parents of Lois Macmillan firmly believe Tortullan justice has found the killers of their daughter.

Speaker 8 At least possibly two of them were really responsible for beating her to death.

Speaker 38 The two being

Speaker 8 Mr. Labrador and Mr.
Benedetto.

Speaker 13 I think the Macmillans wanted someone as a scapegoat. I could understand their loss.
I could understand their sorrow, but you do not convict innocent human beings.

Speaker 24 Prosecutors may have a tough time convicting anyone.

Speaker 32 Results from Scotland Yard's labs, far from being the slam dunk they expected, are inconclusive at best.

Speaker 57 The blood and sand are extremely circumstantial evidence. I mean, they're about as circumstantial as you can get and still be admissible.

Speaker 37 Defense lawyer Sean Murphy, who also is a personal friend of William Labrador, scoffs at the prosecution's evidence.

Speaker 57 A speck of blood was found on Michael Spicer's shirt.

Speaker 57 Essentially, the prosecution said that a limited DNA profile came from this blood speck, and it could have been Lois McMillan's, but it also could have been one in four people in the world.

Speaker 32 As for the grains of sand on Spicer's sneakers, sand traced to the same side of the island where Lois's body was found.

Speaker 57 It puts Michael Spicer on the south shore of the island sometime in the last decade. That has nothing to do with anything.

Speaker 48 Not to say that anyone's out of the woods, especially not Murphy's friend Labrador.

Speaker 25 The other three were seen partying that night.

Speaker 37 No one saw Labrador, who says he went home early to go to sleep.

Speaker 57 Unfortunately, he was home alone that night. That doesn't make him a murderer.

Speaker 44 Now it's all up to the court to weigh a month of evidence, hours of argument over a speck of blood, a grain of sand, that alleged confession that Labrador supposedly gave to a jailhouse snitch.

Speaker 44 The judge takes a a full 24 hours to think about it all and then issues a ruling that seems to surprise even the defendants.

Speaker 13 The judge made a ruling, directed the jury to return verdicts of not guilty.

Speaker 63 He dismisses the murder charges.

Speaker 57 Three down, one to go.

Speaker 51 Against all except Labrador.

Speaker 44 Here come the guys.

Speaker 71 After a year and a half in prison.

Speaker 73 I felt like crying right when I was told because it's been just so long I thought it would never happen.

Speaker 26 Evan George, Michael Spicer.

Speaker 74 After 14 months, it's quite a relief, but I will be home to America tomorrow, I believe.

Speaker 42 And Alex Benedetto are free to go.

Speaker 3 Because finally, my God.

Speaker 73 I want to jump in the ocean. I want to jump in the beautiful Caribbean Sea and have the saltwater wash the circumstances of the prison off me.

Speaker 31 Boy, that feels wonderful.

Speaker 57 That is wonderful.

Speaker 34 Evan George never even had been out of the country until his dream vacation in Tortola 15 months ago.

Speaker 27 Three days after arriving, he was behind bars.

Speaker 65 Yeah, it was a very scary experience.

Speaker 35 But as pleasant as the ocean swim is, what all three want most is to get off this island.

Speaker 25 While the Benedettos steal away to the airport,

Speaker 5 the checkout from the hotel will be very, very brisk.

Speaker 63 Spicer and George catch the first ferry to St.

Speaker 32 Thomas, the U.S.

Speaker 42 Virgin Islands.

Speaker 17 A forlorn William Labrador is left behind, although his family now seems more certain than ever that he too soon will be a free man.

Speaker 11 No case is no case. And the only reason that this has continued for William is because of Jeff Plant.

Speaker 64 The damning testimony of fellow inmate Jeffrey Plant that in prison William confessed to the murder.

Speaker 13 I haven't killed this woman, and the only evidence or so-called evidence that they have

Speaker 46 is a third-time parole violator.

Speaker 60 It's pretty black and white to me.

Speaker 58 William's mother says the defense will prove beyond any doubt that Plant is lying about her son.

Speaker 11 A liar is a liar is a liar. Period.
No exception.

Speaker 56 That's next.

Speaker 8 I think he did scandalous.

Speaker 12 I think he was more than framed.

Speaker 42 William Labrador is sitting in a tortolin prison largely because of the testimony of one man.

Speaker 47 One death morning.

Speaker 43 Jeffrey Plant.

Speaker 38 You're absolutely telling the truth about this candidate.

Speaker 68 Yes, Susan. I am absolutely telling the truth about this.

Speaker 32 A very convincing Texan who testified that when the two shared a prison cell, Labrador told him in no uncertain terms that he killed Lois Macmillan.

Speaker 30 Why would he choose to tell you this, do you think?

Speaker 68 Maybe he just wanted to get it off his chest. I don't know.

Speaker 68 He was bothered by something from day one.

Speaker 32 Labrador's lead attorney, Richard Hector, is about to show a different side to Jeffrey Plant.

Speaker 12 I mean, the man told so many ridiculous lies.

Speaker 37 He will pull back the curtain on the prosecution's star witness and reveal plants far from reputable past.

Speaker 58 More weddings than Elizabeth Taylor.

Speaker 16 Shannon was wife number

Speaker 9 10. 10.

Speaker 9 10.

Speaker 44 You've been married 10 times?

Speaker 36 Well,

Speaker 68 I've been married. Yes, I've been married 10 times.

Speaker 25 And a rap sheet that stretches back to the early 60s.

Speaker 30 I mean, we're talking about convictions for theft or bad checks.

Speaker 34 I mean, looking at your record, people would say, why in the world would we believe this guy?

Speaker 68 Since there was absolutely no benefit to me whatsoever, none. Why

Speaker 68 would I not be believed?

Speaker 38 Well the contention is that there certainly was potential benefit to you that you've had charges reduced over this.

Speaker 68 There was absolutely Susan no deal whatsoever offered to me.

Speaker 27 Defense Attorney Hector knows his entire case could depend on discrediting Jeffrey Plant.

Speaker 41 And he has his own star witness, Tisha Neville, all the way from Texas, Plant's former parole officer.

Speaker 29 I just would hate to see an innocent man go to prison because of Mr. Plant's testimony.

Speaker 33 She will testify that he is both a con man and a professional liar.

Speaker 29 He's a swindler, and he's left lots of lawyers with unpaid bills. And there's creditors, a million of them out there after him.

Speaker 27 As the defense rests,

Speaker 58 the Labradors are convinced his credibility has been destroyed.

Speaker 75 There are no forensics, there is no evidence. So, all we had to do is discredit Jeff Plant.
And, you know, Tisha Neville did that in the spades yesterday.

Speaker 65 Yes.

Speaker 11 God gave us an angel in Tisha Neville.

Speaker 65 I know, she's unbelievable.

Speaker 19 But the prosecution hopes jurors will focus not on Plant's shady past, but on his specific account of the murder.

Speaker 10 It actually fitted in with the pathologist's

Speaker 10 interpretation, which fitted in with our own interpretation of the events and you know the fact that she was held out. Now that prisoner could not have known that.

Speaker 10 There is no way that he could have known it unless somebody came and physically told him.

Speaker 17 As the exhausting six-week trial ends, I haven't felt like this in so long.

Speaker 58 The Labradors are upbeat.

Speaker 75 We're going back today. We're going to start packing, getting our stuff together, positive affirmation to get off this island.

Speaker 44 Now the judge must instruct the jury, and under this system, he is allowed to tell them his opinion of the evidence. He certainly does.

Speaker 44 He says he finds some of William Labrador's story implausible, but that much of Jeffrey Plant's detailed testimony could be true. With that, he sends the jury off to make up its own mind.

Speaker 11 Everybody's praying. Everything is in God's hands today.

Speaker 11 The jury's still sitting deliberating. How much longer the people here in the courthouse will have to wait?

Speaker 33 No one knows.

Speaker 33 Afternoon turns to evening.

Speaker 55 A large crowd gathers outside the courtroom.

Speaker 68 I just want this whole night to be over.

Speaker 51 And finally, after almost eight hours of deliberation,

Speaker 51 the jury decides.

Speaker 25 Guilty.

Speaker 66 Hold it there.

Speaker 9 Time's a bit of a feedback. If you can keep back the money.

Speaker 77 Barbara Labrador collapsed.

Speaker 77 They kept saying over and over, where's where's the justice? Where's the justice?

Speaker 77 They immediately put handcuffs on him and whisked him out the door.

Speaker 42 William Labrador is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Speaker 13 We've spent 482 days to get to this point. I'm sitting there waiting for not guilty.

Speaker 9 And then Mr.

Speaker 13 Labrador, life in prison. And they proceed to handcuff me.
My mother screams. They escort me out of there.

Speaker 47 Sam, you've got to let the jury?

Speaker 36 The judge did not let them allow the evidence that they had asked for.

Speaker 37 Make note.

Speaker 21 Labrador's friends and family are furious, lashing out in court at Lois Macmillan's parents.

Speaker 11 I screamed.

Speaker 66 I screamed in the court.

Speaker 11 I said, you have done your daughter a terrible disservice because somebody is still walking around this island that did this to her.

Speaker 9 They didn't say a word.

Speaker 76 They didn't say a word.

Speaker 66 They They know.

Speaker 76 And I looked him straight in the eye. After the conviction, I looked him straight in the eye and I said, you know what you've done.
I go, you know what you've done.

Speaker 61 The McMillans had little response that night.

Speaker 17 Mrs. McMillan simply saying, my heart has been lifted.

Speaker 16 Even after the verdict, the case against William Labrador was still far from over. Stay with us.

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Speaker 61 It's Mother's Day 2001 and it's not a happy one for Barbara Labrador.

Speaker 11 I never expected that I'd be leaving without him on Mother's Day.

Speaker 19 She's leaving Tortolo for home,

Speaker 32 but vowing to continue to fight for her son as he begins his life sentence.

Speaker 13 I don't know anywhere in the free world that you can go to bed at 12.15 in the morning and spend 16 months in prison and then be convicted of murder.

Speaker 32 At the time, that seemed the final chapter in one of Tortola's most notorious murder cases.

Speaker 34 The island was quiet again. William Labrador sat in prison and he languished there for another two years after his conviction.

Speaker 35 Through it all, his mother Barbara never lost hope.

Speaker 11 Never give up.

Speaker 11 Never give up when you are innocent. Never, never give up.

Speaker 19 Labrador faced his final shot at freedom. He appealed to the island's highest court based in London.

Speaker 26 The news could not have been better.

Speaker 53 The British court threw out Labrador's conviction and ordered him released.

Speaker 11 It will be so nice to have him with me and not having to go into a prison to see him.

Speaker 26 In its ruling, the judges labeled Jeffrey Plant, the prison informant who claimed Labrador confessed to him, a compulsive liar.

Speaker 11 When the only way you can convict an innocent person is to get a career criminal to lie.

Speaker 11 There's something wrong, and that must change.

Speaker 17 On April 7th, 2003, after serving almost three and a half years for Lois McMillan's murder,

Speaker 64 39-year-old William Labrador walked out of prison a free man.

Speaker 67 Tell me all you are out of prison today.

Speaker 73 How does it feel? Relief.

Speaker 67 Very relieved.

Speaker 12 Very relieved. It's been a long journey.

Speaker 76 What has it been like for you?

Speaker 73 Well, from the very outset, 1,179 days ago, when an innocent man has been sitting in prison for that period of time, it's time to go live my life again, which thank God is not taking away from me.

Speaker 27 As William Labrador returned to New York and a new life,

Speaker 19 Lois McMillan's parents and family just tried to put the case behind them.

Speaker 10 It's been physically,

Speaker 31 emotionally,

Speaker 4 exhausting.

Speaker 14 Very.

Speaker 32 While always keeping Lois's memory alive.

Speaker 46 We lost a beautiful, beautiful young woman.

Speaker 9 Gone.

Speaker 6 The rest of it is after the facts follow.

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