A woman who gave false alibis to two killers who murdered a Welsh couple on their honeymoon in Antigua six years ago has been jailed for perverting the course of justice.
Catherine and Ben Mullany were shot on the Caribbean island in July 2008. Mrs Mullany was killed at the scene. Her husband died in Wales a week later.
Georgette Aaron, 37, was sentenced to six years for providing alibis for their killers, Kaniel Martin and Avie Howell.
Martin is serving a life sentence while Howell was shot dead by police in Antigua in June after escaping from prison, where he was also serving a life sentence for the murders and a four-year term for burglary.
Martin and Howell, who were 20 and 17 at the time of the killings, shot the Mullanys in the head in their hotel bedroom on the last day of their honeymoon.
They were also convicted of murdering a Jamaican shopkeeper. Both were also charged with two further killings, although neither stood trial for them.
Aaron had told police she had been with her teenage lover Howell and his accomplice at the time the Mullanys were shot.
At Aaron’s hearing, prosecutor Adlai Smith said her statements had been “calculated to derail an investigation into two men subsequently found to have killed five people over the course of eight weeks.
“It was a dark period in the history of Antigua and Barbuda.”
He added it was quite likely the pair would have continued killing if they had not been arrested, the BBC reported.
Jailing Aaron on October 31, Justice Albert Redhead said she had committed a very serious offence.
“You lied and continue to lie even at your trial that they were with you, and left with you, and you persisted in making a false alibi, knowing that the murders had been committed,” he said.
He said he could not grant a non-custodial sentence as the defence requested as he would be “shirking his responsibility to society” if he did.