Murder charge over British expat stabbed in Saint Lucia

SAINT Lucia police have charged a 22year-old woman with murdering a British yacht designer on the Caribbean island.

Elizabeth Janelle Volney is accused of stabbing Robert Hathaway, 66, at his newly built hillside bungalow in a remote part of the island in January.

At the time of his death, Mr Hathaway was estranged from his 23-year-old second wife and living with two young women whom he described to friends as ‘a bisexual couple of girls’ who ‘don’t like wearing clothes’.

Mr Hathaway, pictured, a marine engineer and keen yachtsman, previously designed and built yachts in Southampton and Jersey, before moving to Saint Lucia in 2001.

He bought a plot of land and planned to retire, but instead began running a superyacht marina in Marigot Bay on the western coast. The Cambridge graduate was known on the island for his extraordinarily colourful personal life. Earlier this year, his estranged young wife Marquena James said she was not surprised at his relationship with the two women with whom he shared his home. ‘His weakness was always women,’ she said.

Mr Hathaway, who was originally from Codford St Peter in Wiltshire, was found murdered in his bed.

He had been living in his new home in Gros Islet, a popular tourist destination on the island’s northern tip, for the last two months of his life. Shortly before his death he wrote on Facebook: ‘One young gf [girlfriend] living with me alone would be bored witless. So this arrangement seems logical, and two months in seems to work. It helps that they don’t like wearing clothes.’

It is believed these women discovered Mr Hathaway’s body at about 10am on January 13. Police said Volney, a native of Saint Lucia, has appeared in court and has been remanded in custody.