Ex-BA steward gets life for murder

A FORMER British Airways steward who once conned more than £200,000 (€230,000) out of friends and colleagues has been jailed for life for murdering his partner.

Glenn Rycroft was told he must serve at least 25 years in jail for battering Gareth MacDonald over the head with a fire extinguisher.

Rycroft killed him in a Travelodge hotel room at the Heston services on the M4, west of London, in September 2007, as his latest scam was about to be exposed.

MacDonald, 30, had left his wife and three children to move in with Rycroft in Rhewl, North Wales, after meeting him on the internet. But the victim had started to become suspicious about his lover after money started going missing from his bank account.

Detectives believe Rycroft had targeted MacDonald to cheat him in the latest of his money-making schemes.

The 33-year-old, originally from Salford, Greater Manchester, denied murder, claiming he planned to marry MacDonald and would never harm him.

He claimed a rent boy must have killed him while he was out of the room but an Old Bailey jury rejected his story and he was found guilty.

Judge Timothy Pontius told Rycroft: “You are a habitual liar, well practiced in the art of deceit and more than ready to lie not only for financial gain but also to try and get yourself out of a difficult situation.”

Rycroft had previously conned BA colleagues and relatives in an investment scam started in September 2000.

When he was on the verge of being caught, he pretended he had cancer to fleece more cash out of his victims. He shaved his head to pretend he was having chemotherapy and accused those he owed money to of being insensitive about his illness.

Rycroft organised raffles and other fundraising events on the pretext that he had to go abroad for expensive medical treatment and used the money to go on lavish holidays to Florida, Australia, Portugal and the Bahamas.

In December 2003, he admitted 25 charges of obtaining money by deception to the tune of more than £200,000, none of which has ever been recovered.

Crispin Aylett QC, prosecuting, said: “This defendant has shown himself to be rather more than a common-or-garden liar. He is rather a good one.”

The judge said: “You are not only a thoroughly dishonest man but also a thoroughly unscrupulous and utterly cold-hearted one. You lived, and have for many years lived, in a fantasy world of your own warped imaginings.”

He said Rycroft had tried to “fool” the jury into thinking he was not responsible for the “vicious murder”.

“The facts of this case demonstrated clearly not a sudden unpremeditated attack arising out of a momentary loss of temper but a considered, planned determination to kill Gareth MacDonald.”

Rycroft had looked at material on the internet entitled “How to kill someone by injection”, “How to break a neck”, “Effect of blow to the head” and “Fall down stairs kills”.