Murder in Paradise

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A special 48 hours mystery. Four young Americans, accustomed to the good life, were enjoying a taste of paradise.
They were on vacation and they were partying. Lois McMillan, their friend and artist, was also there, spending the holidays with her family at their Caribbean retreat.
Then, one night, she never came home. Twelve-thirty wears lulls.
The unthinkable, Lois' body was found. Something happened.
She was out of fear, fleeing from an attacker. Even more shocking, the four friends are arrested.
Charged with murder. No witnesses have ever placed these four men with Lois McMillan that evening.
Their families say they were framed.

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

Susan Spencer investigates. Where will the evidence lead?

You had apparently blood-stained clothing.

There were scratch marks on their arms. William Labrador, the key defendant, speaks out.

We do not convict innocent human beings.

And a dramatic new twist that will turn this case upside down.

A 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.

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 shifting right to the very end.
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. Susan Spencer reports on how some Americans who went looking for an escape became prisoners in paradise.
For the villa and yacht set, Tortola in the British Virgin Islands is simply paradise. A place where the well-heeled can mix and mingle and sail and sun on private beaches and private yachts.
It's been a place of joy. We go down with a suitcase of books, we go to the beach, we walk the beach, we snorkel.
Totally relaxing, nothing to fear. We're away from all the stress.
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. Lois liked it.
She adored her. She grew up there.
My yes. And she was well known down there ever since she was a child.
She's been going there. At the end of 1999, Russell McMillan fell seriously ill.
So Lois planned a longer than usual-usual holiday stay with her parents.

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

And, in fact, it was.

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

She never came home.

At what point did you begin to get worried?

Oh, well, starting about 12.31 o'clock. We're up and, you know, looking at our watch and where's Lois.

Early the next morning, frantic, they called the police. They had then showed up shortly thereafter.
Three of the police 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. The body turned out to be that of Lois McMillan.
Police believe she was attacked somewhere along this deserted stretch, just a few miles from where she last was seen. Her car was found less than a mile away at the ferry dock, handbag and money still inside.
Police think that after a violent struggle, she broke away from her attacker and took off across the seawall, down onto the rocks, leaving behind a trail of personal possessions. A gold necklace, a can of mace, a hair clip, one shoe.
They found her body here in the shallow water. Shirt and bra pulled up, her breasts exposed.
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. Find us together, Lord.
Find us together, Lord.

Crime of any kind is rare on Tortola. News of this murder shocked the island.
This is something which is so far away from the norm here. Especially because this victim seemed not to have an enemy in the world.
She liked people and she had friends around. She knew a lot of people on the island.
A warm, gentle, very nice person. Lois was the McMillan's only child.
Clearly, their pride and joy. Oh, these are sweet.
Oh, look at this. Oh, what a great picture.
Now, how old would she have been in that one? Maybe about three years old. As an adult, Lois had drifted through careers, once an aspiring actress, then an artist, and graduate of the Parsons School of Design.
It's a happy painting. She'd recently been living at home in Connecticut.
This is Lois' bedroom. Oh, you've got to tell me about that.
That looks like Salvador Dali. It does to me, too.
It's just a whimsical painting that she did. That artistic whimsy often showed up in outlandish costumes.
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. But her sometimes quirky behavior did not provide either a motive or any clues to her murder.
So the police started retracing Lois' steps the night before her body was found. Lois came in that evening somewhere around 8 o'clock and change.
She was by herself? She was by herself. Lois Schwartz owns the Jolly Roger and, except for her killer, may be the last person to have seen Lois alive.
Somewhere between maybe 8.45 and 9.30, I was looking downstairs and I saw her drive out by herself. No one followed her, no cars, no people, no nothing, because I was there for about 5 to 10 minutes.
No one knows where or when Lois met up with her killer that night. Guys at bars always know what people are thinking.
What are people here on Tortola thinking? 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. But that is not what the police are thinking.
Just hours after Lois' body is found, they put four suspects behind bars for murder. Four vacationing Americans more used to country clubs than prison cells.
They are Michael Spicer, a well-to-do neighbor of Lois' on Tortola, and his 23-year-old friend, Evan George. Alex Benedetto, the son of a wealthy publisher who had dated Lois a few years before.
And William Labrador, his best friend and partner in a New York modeling agency. News of the arrest electrified the island.
Spicer and Labrador are well-known here and their friends and family insist they are innocent.

They're keeping these guys with absolutely no evidence. But these four suspects are about to find out that on the island of Tortola, different rules apply.
When we come back... How out of the clear blue sky are you falsely accusing not only one person, but all four of us?

William Labrador.

Of murder.

On trial for murder, speaks out.

Exciting things happen on Tortola, but murder usually isn't one of them. There is no evidence whatsoever that associates my son Alexander Benedetto to the death of this poor girl.
For wealthy New York publisher Victor Benedetto's 37-year-old son Alex, Christmas 1999 ended here.

In Her Majesty's prison, he found himself charged with killing Lois McMillan.

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. The one consolation, Alex is not alone.
Also charged, our friends Michael Spicer, 39, a rich law school grad from Virginia, his companion, 23-year-old Evan George, and Alex's boyhood friend and business partner, William Labrador, 37. He starts every letter A-B-D-I-P, which means another beautiful day in paradise.
Labrador's mother Barbara echoes the outrage of all the families that the four have spent almost 16 months in prison. I mean, they're coming to one of nature's little secrets.
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, 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. This is one of my favorite pictures of William, checking out the waves.
William Labrador and Alex Benedetto grew up together. Alex spent summers in Tony Southampton, the Long Island resort town where William lived.
Barbara Labrador says that although William grew up around money, the family was not wealthy. The whole Hampton panache colors our family.
Meanwhile, William had a paper route when he was 10 years old. My kids always worked.
I've always worked. We are not rich by a long shot.
Still, William loved the New York social scene. He reveled in working for an agency representing top models.
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. In late 1999, when business was slow, Christmas in Tortola seemed like a great idea.
Once there, they hooked up with pal Mike Spicer, the third defendant. All stayed at Spicer's family villa, Zebra House.
Mike's kind of a larger-than-life person. He's always the center of attention at a party, a great conversationalist, well-read, good-looking, and very energetic.
Justin Cohen is Spicer's best friend. In the press, he's been described as, I believe the phrase is, trust fund baby.
Is that true? Well, there's a lot of that going around. Certainly here.
Yes, certainly here in Tortola. The last defendant was Spicer's other house guest, Evan George, young and handsome.
Mike really took an interest in Evan and kind of took him under his wing. All but Evan George knew the glamorous and eccentric Lois McMillan.
She lived just down the hill and loved to go out. They all loved to party, especially at places like the Bomba Shack.
They have a full-boob party, and they serve this famous bomb punch,

which is rub and pineapple juice and hallucinogenic mushrooms.

So it's quite wild.

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

Yes, they were. They were on vacation and they were partying.

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

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

They had dinner at their home.

Former New York homicide detective Jay Saulpeter has been hired by Alex Benedetto's family.

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

picked him up.

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

11.45.

That's stamped right on the receipt for the ATM?

Yes, it is.

The men's defense is simple.

They say they never even saw Lois McMillan on the night she died. For most of the night, three of the four were together in public places.
Only William Labrador can't prove what he did that night. His friends had dropped him off some distance from Zebra House to walk home after he told

them he was tired. 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.
Now in an interview from Her Majesty's prison Labrador tells his version of what happened that night. Walked back home got dropped off off at Sebastian's, 11.48.
He says he watched TV and went to bed. ESPN Tonight, the NFL Tonight, and then Learning Channel, Area 51, and called it a night, and that was it.
And here I am. No one on the island, no witnesses, have ever placed these four men with Lois McMillan that evening.
No one. No one except the police, who routinely began interviewing Lois' friends.
Their search for clues led the Tortolan 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.

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

He said he got it the previous day while hiking.

But the officers found their explanations very suspicious.

And before the day was out, they had arrested all four.

Talk about your soul hitting the floor, because that was where you're sitting there, you're helping out, you're thinking to yourself, what are they doing? And then, okay, here, we are accusing you of murder. Knock, knock, knock.
They have wet sneakers and a scratch on the nose. Jay Saul Peters says it was not enough evidence to even think of an arrest.
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.
They find a stain on a shirt that they believe at that time is blood. I mean, you know, it's not like they went in there and there was absolutely nothing here at all.
What appears to be blood could have been sauce. It could have been ketchup.
They put four boys in jail for no reason at all. The defendants and their families charged that the police rushed to judgment out of fear that an unsolved murder would hurt Tortola's image.
They wanted to wrap this up quickly. Arrest somebody, preferably not a local person, and then search for evidence.
The charge of murder, that's a big charge.

Do you realize that this charge can bring you for a life in prison without parole?

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

story?

I asked him whether or not he, in fact, had anything to do with that killing of Ms. McMullen,

and he said yes.

That's next.

Why did you say goodbye?

Why did you make me cry? More than a year after Lois McMillan's brutal death, her parents finally will see these four Americans tried for her murder. We feel there's guilt.
That has to be proven. The truth will come out.
But Lois' parents aren't the only confident ones today. All the boys are looking forward to today so we finally can get the truth out in the courtroom.
Barbara Labrador, here with her daughter Honey, Are you convinced of your son's innocence? Absolutely, no question from day one. Hopes the judge simply will dismiss the charges against her son William and his three co-defendants, Evan George, Alex Benedetto, and Michael Spicer.
They know that we have done everything, absolutely everything. Everything, including hiring a team of high-priced lawyers, six from the Caribbean and three more from the United States.
I anticipate that these boys will be released. This case should never have been brought.
Facing them, the prosecutor, 35-year-old Crown Counsel Terrence Williams. Must have been a terrible way to die, terrible way to die for her.
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. 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 when a person drowns naturally, they would normally be faced down.
From evidence found near the scene... We found a shoe quite close to the body.
We found another shoe further up the beach. Investigators pieced together the story of a fight that began in Lois McMillan's car.
It seemed as if it started with a quarrel in her jeep that she suddenly left the jeep. Because, you know, you found pieces of her necklace in the jeep, and pieces on the street, and pieces on the seaside.
Under British law, cameras are forbidden in the courtroom, 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. Something happened that she was out of fear fleeing from an attacker.
She obviously was running. There obviously was a struggle.
She had cuts on her hands, which are self-defense cuts, perhaps grabbing a knife with somebody coming from behind her. She obviously went to get her mace from her handbag because it was found on the rocks on the seaside.
But she obviously was overpowered. Williams believes she was trying to make it to this police station, less than 150 yards away from where her body was found.
She was close enough to a police station, but not close enough. The jury sees the precise spot where Lois McMillan's desperate struggle ended.
She was pushed head down into the sand. As does her father, who keeps his distance.
She was both being drowned and being asphyxiated by the sand. Meanwhile, the men Russ McMillan believes murdered his daughter bask in a rare moment outside prison walls.
Possibly their last for many years to come. Authorities think they have a strong, although circumstantial, case.
You had apparently bloodstained 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. The police collected 85 items from the house, clothing, shoes, even nail clippings.
Their nails were all cut quite low, apparently quite recently, and apparently in concert. 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.
And Scotland Yard was even brought in.

Tests showed that the specks on Michael Spicer's shirt were indeed blood, not barbecue sauce. The prosecution says the blood did not come from the defendants, but it could have come from Lois McMillan.
A Scotland Yard geologist also inspected Spicer's sandy shoes. 15% of the sand on the shoes matches the sand at West End where her body was found.
Plus, the prosecution says, the men's stories were inconsistent. The men claimed 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. Finally, there's that ATM receipt the defense is using as an alibi.
Prosecutors say it actually puts the four men in the same area as Lois McMillan at a crucial time. 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 made.
Ridiculous, says the defense, which calls all this so-called evidence, like sandy shoes on an island, inconclusive and meaningless. There is no concrete physical evidence to tie these guys to Lois' death.
Not a shred. nothing.
But the prosecution's case is more than physical evidence. Its biggest weapon, testimony about an alleged confession by William Labrador.
Mr. Labrador asked me, did I think that God would forgive him if he had anything to do with killing the girl? Jeffrey Plant, a Texas businessman, in jail awaiting trial for passing bad checks, says that Labrador unburdened himself when the two were cellmates.
I asked him whether or not he had anything to do with killing of Miss McMillan, and he said yes. 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 drowned her by putting his foot on the back of her neck an account that directly matched the autopsy report the

information that he provided was information which we term as someone having unique knowledge of a claim that could only have been known to the person who actually perpetrated the crime for the authorities plant pulled the case all together he fingered the killer and even provided motive. And asked him why, and what he told me is that it was over money and that she wasn't any good.
He told you with absolute clarity that he had killed Lois McMillan. Absolute clarity.
Put his foot on her neck. Correct.
Until she drowned? Yes.

The prosecution rests after three weeks.

But even before the defense starts its case,

it takes a surprising turn.

If we can get back, please.

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

For 475 days, William Labrador and his three co-defendants have watched beautiful Tortolan sunsets from their prison cells. 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. But tomorrow could change that.
Tomorrow could bring freedom. It took the prosecution three weeks to wrap up its case.
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. But the parents of Lois McMillan firmly believe Tortolan Justice has found the killers of their daughter.
At least possibly two of them were really responsible for beating her to death. The two being? Mr.
Labrador and Mr. Benedetto.
I think the McMillans wanted someone as a scapegoat. I could understand their loss.
I could understand their sorrow. But you do not convict innocent human beings.
Prosecutors may have a tough time convicting anyone. Results from Scotland Yard's labs, far from being the slam dunk they expected, are inconclusive at best.
The blood and sand are extremely circumstantial evidence. I mean, they're about as circumstantial as you can get and still be admissible.
Defense lawyer Sean Murphy, who also is a personal friend of William Labrador, scoffs at the prosecution's evidence. A speck of blood was found on Michael Spicer's shirt.
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. As for the grains of sand on Spicer's sneakers, sand traced to the same side of the island where Lois' body was found.
It puts Michael Spicer on the south shore of the island sometime in the last decade. That has nothing to do with anything.
Not to say that anyone's out of the woods, especially not Murphy's friend Labrador. The other three were seen partying that night.
No one saw Labrador, who says he went home early to go to sleep. Unfortunately, he was home alone that night.
That doesn't make him a murderer. 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.
The judge takes a full 24 hours to think about it all and then issues a ruling that seems to surprise even the defendants. The judge made a ruling, directed the jury to return verdicts of not guilty.
He dismisses the murder charges.

Three down, one to go.

Against all except Labrador.

Here come the guys.

After a year and a half in prison.

I felt like crying right when I was told because it's been just so long.

I thought it would never happen.

Evan George, Michael Spicer. After 14 months, it's quite a relief.

But I will be home to America tomorrow, I believe. And Alex Benedetto are free to go.
Give me a kiss. Finally, my God.
I want to jump in the ocean. I want to jump in the beautiful Caribbean Sea and have the salt water wash the circumstances of the prison off me.
Boy, that feels wonderful. That is wonderful.

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

Three days after arriving, he was behind bars.

Yeah, it was a very scary experience.

But as pleasant as the ocean swim is,

what all three want most is to get off this island. While the Benedettos steal away to the airport, the checkout from the hotel will be very, very brisk.
Spicer and George catch the first ferry to St. Thomas, the U.S.
Virgin Islands. 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.
No case is no case, and the only reason that this has continued for William is because of Jeff Plant. The damning testimony of fellow inmate Jeffrey Plant that in prison, William confessed to the murder.
I haven't killed this woman, and the only evidence or so-called evidence that they have is a third-time parole violator. It's pretty black and white to me.
William's mother says the defense will prove beyond any doubt that Plant is lying about her son. A liar is a liar is a liar, period.
No exception. That's next.
I think it is scandalous. I think it is more than framed.
William Labrador is sitting in a Tortolan prison, largely because of the testimony of one man. Morning, Jeff.
Morning. Jeffrey Plant.
You're absolutely telling the truth about this confession. Yes, sir, and I am absolutely telling the truth about this.
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 McMillan. Why would he choose to tell you this, do you think? Maybe he just wanted to get it off his chest.
I don't know. It was, it was, he was bothered by something from day one.
Labrador's lead attorney, Richard Hector, is about to show a different side to Jeffrey Plant. I mean, the man told so many ridiculous lies.
He will pull back the curtain on the prosecution's star witness and reveal Plant's far from reputable past. More weddings than Elizabeth Taylor.
Shannon was wife number 10. 10.
10. You've been married 10 times? Well, I've been married, yes.
Yes. I've been married 10 times.
And a rap sheet that stretches back to the early 60s. I mean, we're talking about convictions for theft, bad checks.
I mean, looking at your record, people would say, why in the world would we believe this guy? Since there was absolutely no benefit to me whatsoever, none, why would I not be believed? Well, the contention is that there certainly was potential benefit to you, that you've had charges reduced over this. There was absolutely, Susan, no deal whatsoever offered to me.
Defense attorney Hector knows his entire case could depend on discrediting Jeffrey Plant. And he has his own star witness, Tisha Neville, all the way from Texas, Plant's former parole officer.
I just would hate to see an innocent man go to prison because of Mr. Plant's testimony.
She will testify that he is both a con man and a professional liar. 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.
As the defense rests, the Labradors are convinced his credibility has been destroyed. 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 spades yesterday.
Yes, God gave us an angel in Tisha Neville. She is unbelievable.
But the prosecution hopes jurors will focus not on Plant's shady past, but on his specific account of the murder. It actually fitted in with the pathologist's interpretation, which fitted in with her own interpretation of the events, and, you fact that she was held now that prisoner could not have known that there is no way that he could have known it unless somebody came and physically told him as the exhausting six-week trial ends i haven't felt like this in so long the labradors are upbeat we're going today.
We're going to start packing, getting our stuff together. Positive affirmation to get off this island.
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.
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.
Everybody's praying. Everything is in God's hands today.
The jury's still sitting, deliberating. How much longer the people here in the courthouse have to wait.
No one knows. Afternoon turns to evening.

A large crowd gathers outside the courtroom. I just want this whole nightmare to be over.
And finally, after almost eight hours of deliberation, the jury decides. Guilty.
I'm gonna keep back.

This is gonna keep back here.

The lava lava collapsed.

Keep back. sides.
Guilty. Barbara Labrador collapsed.
They kept saying over and over, where is the justice, where is the justice? They immediately put handcuffs on him and whisked him out the door. William Labrador is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
We've spent 482 days to get to this point. I'm sitting there waiting for not guilty.
And then Mr. Labrador, life in prison, and they proceed to handcuff me.
My mother screams. They escort me out of jury? The judge did not let them allow the evidence that they had asked for.
Make note. Labrador's friends and family are furious, lashing out in court at Lois McMillan's parents.
I screamed, I screamed in the court. I said, you have done your daughter a terrible disservice because somebody is still walking around this island

that did this too hard.

They didn't say a word.

They didn't say a word.

They know.

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.

The McMillans had little response that night.

Mrs. McMillan simply saying, My heart has been lifted.
Even after the verdict, the case against William Labrador was still far from over. Stay with us.
Some people follow the rules, but where's the fun in that? I'm Sora and this is rule breakers the podcast where we celebrate

the rebels the misfits and the ones who make their own way every week i sit down with the biggest

rule breakers in sports entertainment and beyond to talk about the wildest moments toughest lessons

and why breaking the rules might just be the key to success follow and listen to rule breakers with

serea and odyssey podcast available now for free for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. It's Mother's Day 2001, and it's not a happy one for Barbara Labrador.
I never expected that I'd be leaving without him on Mother's death. She's leaving Tortola for home, but vowing to continue to fight for her son as he begins his life sentence.
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 at the time that seemed the final chapter in one of tortola's most notorious murder cases the island was quiet again William Labrador sat in prison and he languished there for another two years after his conviction. Through it all, his mother Barbara never lost hope.
Never give up. Never give up when you are innocent.
Never, never give up. Labrador faced his final shot at freedom.
He appealed to the island's highest court, based in London. The news could not have been better.
The British court threw out Labrador's conviction and ordered him released. It will be so nice to have him with me and not having to go into a prison to see him.
In its ruling, the judge is labeled Jeffrey Plant, the prison informant who claimed Labrador confessed to him a compulsive liar. When the only way you can convict an innocent person is to get a career criminal to lie, there's something wrong, and that must change.
On April 7, 2003, after serving almost three and a half years for Lois McMillan's murder, 39-year-old William Labrador walked out of prison a free man. You are out of prison today.
How does it feel? Relieved. Very relieved.
Very relieved. It's been a long journey.
What has it been like for you? Well, from the very outset, 1179 days ago, 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 taken away from me.
As William Labrador returned to New York and a new life, Lois McMillan's parents and family just tried to put the case behind them. It's been physically, emotionally exhausting.

Very.

While always keeping Lois' memory alive.

We lost a beautiful, beautiful young woman.

Gone!

The rest of it is after the fact.

All of it is after the fact. All of it.
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It's not just music. This is family.
We call them music legends. To be great, there are sacrifices that need to take place.
They call them mom and dad. My mom is literally calling me right now.
The global music docuseries returns to Paramount+. Nobody can hype the world up like my dad.
With rare family stories from the children of Lil Wayne, Buster Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, and more.

Parents just don't understand.

Don't miss the new season of Family Legacy.

All episodes now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.