Murder of Yvonne Gilford

Yvonne Gilford was an Australian nurse who was murdered in the King Fahd Military Medical Complex, Dharhan, Saudi Arabia on 12 December 1996.

Two British nurses, Deborah Parry and Lucille "Lucy" McLauchlan, were arrested for the crime. Parry confessed to being the murderer and McLauchlan to being an accessory, though both subsequently claimed to have been coerced into signing the confession. Parry was sentenced to death by beheading, and McLauchlan to eight years' imprisonment and 500 lashes. Parry's sentence was reduced to life imprisonment after Gilford's elder brother Frank accepted a "blood money" payment of approximately £750,000, and both sentences were eventually commuted to time served after personal intervention from King Fahd.

Yvonne Gilford

Yvonne Gilford grew up on a farm in Jamestown, South Australia, along with her parents and her only sibling, Frank. She became a nurse at the age of 28 and initially worked in Auckland, before moving onto London in 1973, and then Johannesburg in 1976. After working in various hospitals in the city for the next 20 years, she accepted a new job in Dhahran in April 1996, and moved to Saudi Arabia, with her ultimate aim being to earn enough money to retire from nursing and return to Australia. She initially found herself with few colleagues who spoke English, and rapidly befriended Parry and McLauchlan after they arrived in Dhahran in August of that year.^[1] For Parry it was her second time working in the country, having previously worked there between 1993 and 1994, while it was McLauchlan's first time working abroad, having been dismissed from her previous job for credit card fraud. It subsequently emerged she had used fraudulent references to obtain the job in Dhahran.^[2]

Murder

Gilford was last seen alive on the evening of 11 December, when she, Parry and McLauchlan held an "early Christmas party" in her bedroom. She failed to report for work the following morning, and when guards were sent to her bedroom to investigate, they found her dead. There were signs of a struggle in which Gilford had been stabbed 13 times, though the ultimate cause of her death was ascertained to have been asphyxiation by her own bed pillow. Within the next week, Parry and McLauchlan were arrested on suspicion of the murders after allegedly using Gilford's bank card to make a series of withdrawals totalling approximately $1,000.^[1]

Trial and sentencing

Following their arrest, Parry eventually confessed to having been in a relationship with the victim, and that she had attacked Gilford (albeit without intent to kill) following an argument. McLauchlan agreed that her account of events was true, though by the time of the trial both had unsuccessfully attempted to withdraw the confession, claiming that they had been intimidated, deprived of sleep and subjected to threats of sexual violence in order to coerce them into signing it.^[3] Prior to the trial, the lawyers for the two nurses discovered similarities between Gilford's death and the 1994 murder of Liberty de Guzman, another nurse at the same complex, but that case was judged to not be relevant to the trial.^[4]

The actual trial was relatively swift, in large part due to the confession that the two nurses had signed. There was no cross-examination of the two witnesses, nor any witnesses or forensic evidence.^[1] The two were found guilty, and McLauchlan was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment and 500 lashes. Parry's sentencing was more complicated, as her crime was punishable by death, but could be commuted to a life sentence if the closest surviving relative of the victim were to accept a "blood money" payment as allowed under the Islamic law of Diyya. Yvonne Gilford's closest surviving relative was her brother Frank, who initially refused the notion of accepting any such payment, though eventually accepted a payment worth around £750,000, which was funded primarily by British Aerospace. Frank subsequently donated the entire payment to a children's charity.^[5]

While Parry had been saved from the death penalty, there were still many questions about the overall fairness of the trial, and in March 1998, Tony Blair personally appealed to King Fahd during a state visit to resolve the situation. Finally, on 20 May 1998, Fahd commuted the sentences of both women to the time that they had already served, the only conditions being that both were to write him a letter personally thanking him for his clemency, and then accept deportation back to the UK.^[6]

Aftermath

Following her return to the UK, McLauchlan married her fiancé Grant Ferrie. She subsequently asked to meet Frank Gilford to personally apologise for calling him a "greedy, selfish bastard" for accepting the blood money, but Frank refused the offer and said that he did not ever want to meet either of the two nurses.^[7] She was subsequently struck off the nursing register for her actions in using false references to obtain her job in Saudi Arabia.^[2] In 2011 she was convicted of credit card fraud for a second time,^[8] before being convicted of theft in May 2012. On both occasions, her solicitor said she had been "mentally scarred" by her experience in the Saudi prison.^[2] McLauchlan died on 7 January 2014 at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, after suffering a brain haemorrhage at her house two days previously.^[9]

Parry resumed her nursing career upon her return to the UK, being re-employed at one of her former jobs at Holy Cross Hospital in Haslemere, despite an attempt by George Galloway to have her banned from resuming her nursing career.^[10] She continued to maintain that she had not been in a relationship with Yvonne Gilford and no involvement whatsoever with the murder, and in 2012 she called for Gilford's body to be exhumed and subjected to forensic techniques that were not available at the time of her death.^[2]

The case attracted much attention in the UK and Australia owing to the fact it would have been the first execution of a western woman by Saudi Arabia.^[1] Other factors were the British media's reporting over the case and the political pressures that prompted Fahd to release the nurses.^[5]

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