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| Mullany murders: Honeymooners' killers jailed for life | Mullany murders: Honeymooners' killers jailed for life |
| (40 minutes later) | |
| Two men who murdered a Welsh couple on honeymoon on the Caribbean island of Antigua have been given three consecutive life sentences. | Two men who murdered a Welsh couple on honeymoon on the Caribbean island of Antigua have been given three consecutive life sentences. |
| Avie Howell and Kaniel Martin were jailed for killing Ben and Catherine Mullany, who were 31 and from Pontardawe, Swansea Valley. | |
| The newlyweds were shot in July 2008 on the last day of their holiday. | |
| Martin, 23, and Howell, 20, denied killing the couple and a local shopkeeper. | Martin, 23, and Howell, 20, denied killing the couple and a local shopkeeper. |
| Antigua's High Court, in St John's, heard that Mrs Mullany, a doctor, died almost instantly after she was shot in the back of the head during a robbery at the Cocos Hotel. | |
| Mr Mullany, a student physiotherapist and former soldier and policeman, was flown home to Swansea but died a week after the shooting. | |
| They had been married for two weeks. | They had been married for two weeks. |
| The couple were buried in the grounds of St John Evangelist Church, Cilybebyll, near Pontardawe - the church where they had married. | |
| The month following the killings, Martin and Howell were charged with their murders and that of 43-year-old Jamaican shopkeeper Woneta Anderson. | |
| During the trial the jury heard a bandana with Howell's DNA was found at Mrs Anderson's shop. | |
| Forced to kneel | |
| Recordings found on Mr Mullany's stolen Nokia phone were replayed, in which one of the voices identified himself as "Sample Dan" - an alias used by Martin. | |
| An inquest in Swansea in October heard that the killers forced the newlyweds to kneel beside their bed before shooting them. | |
| Neighbouring holidaymakers at the Cocos Hotel heard screams and gunfire at about 5am local time. | |
| The murders hit tourism on Antigua hard. | |
| After the guilty verdicts, Det Supt Keith Niven, who led the Metropolitan Police's investigation team, said he believed Howell and Martin had set out to kill the couple. | |
| "The level of violence inflicted upon their victims in order to steal such low-value property was incomprehensible and leads me to believe that murder was their primary intention," he said. | |
| "Ben and Catherine must have been terrified when they were awoken and confronted in their room by two strangers pointing a gun at them. | |
| Mullany Fund | |
| "Throughout this investigation and throughout the trial the two defendants have shown no signs of remorse - not even to Ben and Catherine's parents who have been present in court." | |
| Martin and Howell had faced the possibility of the death sentence - something which has not been carried out on the island since the 1990s. | |
| Two months after the murders, almost 900 people attended a memorial service at Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff, including the Duchess of York. | |
| The couple's families have set up a charity which aims to widen participation in the field of medicine and physiotherapy by offering grants to students. | |
| The Mullany Fund awards two £1,000 prizes each year to a physiotherapy student and a medical student at UWE and Swansea University's School of Medicine. |