GMA: Virgin Islands Murder Trial Opens
T O R T O L A, British Virgin Islands, April 2 -- It had the makings of a mystery novel: a beautiful young woman visiting an island paradise was murdered, and four privileged American men on vacation were charged in her death.
But it's no work of fiction. A trial starts today on the British Virgin Island of Tortola, where an American man stands charged with killing another tourist, Lois McMillen. And three of his friends are charged with trying to help him get away with it. National correspondent Don Dahler followed the twists and turns in a Good Morning America exclusive.
Barbara Labrador, the mother of accused killer William Labrador, has been paying brief visits to her son in the mountaintop prison where he has been awaiting trial for more than a year. Most recently she brought him the suit he will wear at his murder trial.
"I'm very proud of him," she said. "He's tall, dark, handsome and smart. He's the type of person that if I was not his mother and I met him somewhere, I would enjoy talking to."
Bad Things Don’t Happen HereLabrador grew up in the Hamptons, a tony section of Long Island, but the 37-year-old financial adviser may never leave the vacation paradise where prosecutors say he became a murderer.
From his prison window, Labrador has a commanding view of Tortola, a quiet, relatively undeveloped island that is so picturesque it's almost a Caribbean cliché. Bad things generally don't happen here: on average there are only four homicides a year. Lois McMillen became one of them. She was beaten and drowned on a Tortola beach in January 2000. Labrador and three others are charged in her death.
Her family is devastated.
"No mother ever had a daughter that was more loving," said Josephine McMillen, her mother. Her daughter, who lived in Connecticut, was quite literally an all-American girl, a descendant of Robert Livingston, one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence.
"Lois was a beautiful young woman. Thirty-four years old. Very much a part of our lives," said her father, Russell McMillen.
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