Backpack hostel arsonist faces jail

Violent drifter Robert Long was found guilty today of starting a fire in a backpackers' hostel in Australia which killed 15 young travellers - seven of them British.

There were cries of "Yes!" from the public gallery as the jury of seven women and five men returned their unanimous verdicts of guilty to arson, and the murders of twins Stacey and Kelly Slarke, 22, from Western Australia.

Long, 38, an itinerant fruit-picker, showed no emotion.

The parents of the twins were in court to hear the verdicts. Friends and family cried and hugged and kissed each other as the judge adjourned the hearing for sentencing on Monday.

Long faces life imprisonment for the worst fire of its kind in Australia. Eighty people had been asleep in the Palace Backpackers Hostel when fire broke out in the early hours of 23 June, 2000. Within 10 minutes it had ripped through the 100-year-old wooden building.

The British victims were Michael Lewis, 25, from Bristol; his best friend Gary Sutton, 24, from Twerton, Bath; Adam Rowland, 19, from St Leonards, East Sussex; Natalie Morris, 28, and Sarah Williams, 23, both from Merthyr Tydfil; Melissa Smith, 26, from Thatcham, Berkshire; and Claire Webb, 24, from Ascot.

Those who escaped the blazing twostorey hostel crawled through choking black smoke amid the screams of other guests, kicking in doors and clambering through the barred windows to flee across rooftops.

During the four-week trial the Brisbane court had heard how Long had intimate knowledge of the building, where he had dossed down in the TV lounge for months in a smelly sleeping bag. The prosecution called experts to testify that the fire was deliberately lit in the TV room in several pieces of furniture.

EIGHT British survivors flew to Brisbane to tell how they saw Long, who had threatened to kill and maim backpackers he hated, in or around the hostel shortly before fire raged through the building, trapping many of them, in the early hours of the morning.

Keith O'Brien from Wigan told the court he overheard Long telling somebody he would burn down the hostel with everyone in it.

The prosecution admitted their case was almost entirely circumstantial and largely hinged on the evidence of two undercover police officers, who said the drifter confessed after being shot in a violent struggle to arrest him, saying: "I'm dying, anyway. I started that fire."

Many of the victims had left home with little more than a rucksack and a return air ticket. Like thousands of other students on their gap year, they were in search of adventure - and thought they had found it at the £6-anight Palace, a century-old, raffish, slightly down-at-heel building in Childers, 185 miles north of Brisbane.

The town - deep in south-east Queensland's sugar cane and citrus country - was a stopping-off point for young Britons earning money to finance their travels. They could earn up to £180 a week as farm labourers - more than enough to pay for accommodation, food and beer.

For many who lost loved ones in the fire, the conviction of Long came as an overwhelming relief, but the suffering is still intense almost two years on.

Natalie Morris's father Ken, from Cefn Coed in south Wales, said justice had been done and the family was "over the moon" - but added the end of the trial would change nothing for him and wife Yvonne: "Every day is difficult for us now. It's not more traumatic today than any other day."

The couple hope to travel to Australia for the fire memorial service, due to be held exactly two years after the blaze, on 23 June.

Brian and Valerie Sutton are still trying to make sense of their feelings. Mr Sutton, of Bath, said: "It has not quite sunk in yet. Of course we are feeling relieved. I think we shall know what our feelings really are when we have heard the sentence.

"Obviously nothing is going to bring back our son. We are relieved Long is not going to get away with it."

"But I don't think we are ever going to get over it, because it is such a horrific thing. It was terrible, absolutely dreadful. It is always in our minds how they must have suffered terribly in the minutes before they died. We think about it all the time. It has shattered our lives,"

Mrs Sutton paid tribute to her son and said she was still angry he had been taken away by an act of "evil".

"Gary was a joy, he was full of life, and full of fun and it is hard to know that we are not going to have that again," she said. "We had not seen Gary for 10 months and he only had another few weeks to go before he was coming home. It all adds to the despair and the grief.

"We do not focus too much on the trial because no matter what happens we will not get Gary back. Our loss is incalculable.

"The last 21 months have been severe mental torture. There is no joy in our lives at all - our future has been taken away from us."

Mr Sutton said he and his wife had kept in touch with some other victims' families to support to each other. "We have been in contact with a family in Holland," he said. "We keep in touch by telephone, letter or email. We discuss our feelings and I think it does help to speak with people who have gone through the same thing."

Survivor Keith O'Brien, speaking from his home in Wigan today, said of the verdict: "That's brilliant news. The jury have done their job and found this evil man guilty of a terrible crime. Justice has been done in the case of Robert Long."

But he added: "I don't think justice-will be done for our friends who died until the two managers of the Palace hostel face court for the negligence of turning off the smoke alarms, which they admitted in court that they did.

"We all know that had those alarms been working properly, a lot more people could have got out."

Long had spent the previous eight years in and out of psychiatric and medical institutions. After an unhappy childhood, he became a drifting labourer. His first encounter with police as a young man in Woollongong was the theft of women's underwear from clothes lines.

Long served six months in Grafton maximum security prison in New South Wales for domestic violence, and was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. He was later sentenced to four years for stalking and beating up exgirlfriend Christine Campbell, and kidnapping their six-year-old daughter. After leaving prison, he tried to kill Ms Campbell and her three children by setting fire to their caravan. They survived.

? Additional reporting: Colin Adamson and Martin Delgado

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