Paradise isle killer faces execution

A man faces death by hanging after being found guilty of the murder of a Harrow-educated millionaire businessman at his idyllic Caribbean home.

Former RAF pilot Tony Fetherston, 66, from Suffolk, was blasted in the chest at point-blank range after he refused to give cash to a man who called at his property in the St Kitts capital of Basseterre.

Joseph Hazel, 30, was last night found guilty of murdering Mr Fetherston in the cold-blooded shooting. He was warned the prosecution would press for the death penalty when he appears for sentencing on 26 April.

Hazel, who lived 300 yards from Mr Fetherston's bungalow, was found guilty by a majority of 10 to two. He had denied murder and was in jail for nearly three years while awaiting trial.

Mr Fetherston, deputy chairman of the Thomas Meadows International freight forwarding company, the forerunner of the current DHL business, spent the winters with his wife Margaret, a former secretary of Denis Healey when he was defence secretary, at their bungalow in Basseterre.

He was shot on 26 January, 2000, while his wife was on the telephone talking to their daughter Alex in New York.

Miss Fetherston, 30, now an antiques dealer in Fulham, heard the shot and feared her mother could be killed as well.

The murder took place when Mr Fetherston went to answer a ring of the bell in the garden wall door. Hazel demanded money and shot Mr Fetherston dead before trying to smash down the kitchen door.

Mrs Fetherston barricaded herself inside the one-storey property and crawled on her hands and knees to avoid being shot while she pulled a phone towards her.

Seeing the "hard, staring eyes'' of her husband's murderer through the shutters of the kitchen door she called Peter Allcorn, the British honorary consul and family friend, for help.

Mr Allcorn told the jury: "When I reached the Fetherstons' residence the gate was opened and I went in and Tony was on the lawn and he looked as if he was no longer with us.

"He had a big hole in his chest about three inches in diameter and his wife was at the other end of the lawn and she obviously appeared to be in shock.''

Hazel's DNA was found on a pair of maroon trousers left outside the garden wall. A maroon mask was discovered in the garden, cut from the trousers, but DNA profiles could not be established from the saliva found on it. Evidence was eventually flown back to London for analysis by the Met.

Hazel gave alibis to the police that he had been with two people until nearly two hours after the murder took place, but the alibis turned prosecution witnesses and denied this.

St Kitts has suffered from an explosion in cocaine trafficking which has led to an increase in muggings and burglaries.

Today Mrs Fetherston expressed her relief at the outcome of the case. Speaking after the jury's verdict she said: "It has been years of hell. I am enormously relieved now.''

Mrs Fetherston, who lives in a house on the banks of the Deben in Woodbridge, Suffolk, said: "I am very shocked at the moment. I do not feel any particular malice towards Hazel. I just feel sad that it ever happened."

Mrs Fetherston says she is still prepared to return to St Kitts.

"I will go back to the island because Tony is there. He loved it and I still love it. The thing that happened was appalling but that is an isolated incident,'' she said.