N.Y. Man Convicted in Artist’s Death on Island

ROAD TOWN, British Virgin Islands —  A jury on Thursday convicted a New York man of murdering a female artist who had been vacationing in the British Virgin Islands.

The jury found William Labrador, 37, guilty of killing Lois McMillen, a 34-year-old artist from Middlebury, Conn. McMillen’s body was found on a Tortola island beach on Jan. 15, 2000. Prosecutors said she was drowned by someone who held her head under water.

The jury reached the decision after 7 1/2 hours of deliberations, and the judge promptly gave a life term to Labrador, 37, a financial advisor from Southampton, N.Y.

His mother, Barbara Labrador, let out a scream and doubled over in her chair when she heard the sentence. Her son showed little emotion as he was led away.

The British Caribbean territory automatically imposes life imprisonment in murder convictions.

The court dismissed charges against three other suspects on May 3, saying the evidence was insufficient. All four men were staying at a vacation home on Tortola not far from McMillen’s vacation home. They said they had socialized with her during their visit but denied seeing her the day she died.

The other three suspects were Alexander Benedetto, 35, who works for a publisher in New York; Michael Spicer, 37, a law student from Albemarle County, Va.; and Evan George, 23, an unemployed construction worker from Washington, D.C.

All four men were arrested hours after McMillen’s body was found, and they were held without bail.

Defense attorneys had argued that the prosecution had no physical evidence linking the suspects to McMillen’s death and based its case on testimony from Jeffrey Plante, who shared a cell with Labrador.

Plante testified that Labrador confessed to him that he killed McMillen. Labrador denies Plante’s allegations, and his attorney, Richard Hector, called Plante a lying “prison snitch” who also testified against a cellmate in a 1995 murder case in Hawaii.