Notorious Black Widow hitman appeals sentence
ASOUTH African hitman, serving life behind bars for the contract killing of a Sutton Coldfield man, has launched an appeal against his minimum jail term.
Private detective Barry Trigwell, 44, was found bludgeoned to death in the bath at his home in Walmley, in February 1995.
The killing was ordered by his wife Anne Trigwell – dubbed the Black Widow – who had a new lover and stood to inherit £400,000 in insurance money.
Paul Petrus Ras and Loren Anders Sundkvist, petty criminals from Johannesburg, were recruited to travel to England from South Africa and kill Mr Trigwell.
The pair were jailed for life in 2003 after being extradited and found guilty of the murder.
Ras, 54, was handed a minimum term of 15 years after Mr Justice Langstaff took into account the time he had already served both on remand in the UK and while awaiting extradition.
But the killer now claims his lawyers gave the judge the wrong figures and that he actually spent far longer behind bars in South Africa.
Lord Justice Davis, sitting with Mr Justice Spencer and Judge Sarah Munro QC, adjourned the case so Ras can get a legal team to examine the issue.
Birmingham Crown Court heard in 2003 that Mr Trigwell had been brutally beaten to death with a poker at his home in Fowey Close, Sutton Coldfield.
His body was discovered in the bath, semi-clothed, and his skull was shattered.
The prosecution case was that the plot to kill him had been hatched during one of his wife’s regular trips to her native South Africa.
Anne Trigwell was jailed for life in 1996 after being found guilty of murder, and she died from cancer in 2007.
No date was given for Ras’s bid to cut his sentence to return to the Appeal Court.
Ras and Sundkvist had both denied the charge, claiming they had come to Britain on a business trip. The trial heard how Mr Trigwell’s wife had hatched the plan after she found another lover in her native South Africa.
To arrange the murder she approached South African nightclub owner Alex Mitri, who was described in court as a mysterious figure who had connections.
Police believe Sundkvist and Ras were offered £10,000 each for killing Mr Trigwell, while Mitri stood to get £100,000 for setting up the hit.
The case involved officers from West Midlands Police travelling to South Africa to trace the pair and arrange extradition.
Anne Trigwell later died in a hospice after being released from prison on compassionate grounds a short time earlier.
Her solicitor Giovanni Di Stefano insisted her conviction was unsafe and said he deplored a bid by the Home Office to deport her to South Africa a few days before her death.
The fear of her being sent back to South Africa in that condition may well have sparked off her decline, he said.
He also maintained his belief that Barry Trigwell’s alleged links to the British security services may have played a part in his death.
When her husband was murdered in Birmingham, Mrs Trigwell was in South Africa, he said. When she heard he was dead she came back to the UK of her own free will.
But during Trigwell’s 1996 trial at Birmingham Crown Court, jurors heard how the slim, dark-haired woman, then 43, was driven by money and sex. The court heard that Barry Trigwell became suspicious in the final days before his death after receiving phone calls from a South African man who wanted to meet him. He used the 1471 facility on his phone to retrieve a number which he passed to his sister saying: “If anything ever happens to me, give this number to the investigators”. It turned out to be the number for a hotel in Sutton Coldfield where the hitmen had stayed around the time of the murder.
Staff implicated Trigwell’s wife when they gave a description of a South African woman matching her description who had dropped off keys and £300 in cash in a brown envelope for the men.
Sentencing her to life, Mr Justice Nelson told her: “This was a cold, calculated offence, a chilling murder. You inspired and planned the death of your husband and you were actively involved in ensuring that the killers were able to perform their gruesome and vicious task.”