Two men sentenced to hang for triple murder

TRINIDAD: Two Trinidadian men have been sentenced to die by hanging for the murder of a former BBC anchor woman, her mother …

TRINIDAD: Two Trinidadian men have been sentenced to die by hanging for the murder of a former BBC anchor woman, her mother and her brother-in-law.

One of the condemned men, Daniel Agard (21), is the nephew of the murdered journalist, Lynette Lithgow Pearson (52), who worked for the BBC in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Agard is the grandson of Ms Pearson's mother, Maggie Lee (83), who was also killed.

Ms Pearson, Ms Lee and agricultural consultant John Cropper were bound with wire, hacked with a machete and had their throats slashed at Mr Cropper's home near Port of Spain in 2001.

Agard and Lester Pitman (26) were sentenced on Wednesday after an eight-week trial.

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Ms Pearson lived in France. She and her mother were visiting Mr Cropper (59), a British citizen, in their native Trinidad. Agard was charged after he was video-taped withdrawing money with Mr Cropper's bank card.

Mr Cropper and his wife, Angela, a retired United Nations officer, ran the Cropper Foundation, which helped budding writers and backed environmental awareness.

Trinidad carried out its last hanging in 1999.