New Zealander jailed for 'murder in paradise'

SYDNEY(AFP) - A New Zealander was jailed for 24 years Wednesday after being convicted of the first murder in 150 years on the tiny South Pacific territory of Norfolk Island. Glenn McNeill, 29, murdered Australian Janelle Patton and dumped her stabbed and battered body at a picnic spot on Easter Sunday 2002 in what was dubbed by the world's media as a "murder in paradise."

Norfolk Chief Justice Mark Weinberg called the crime "callous and senseless" at a sentencing hearing in Sydney broadcast live to the small courthouse in Norfolk Island where McNeill had been convicted in March. "You took the life of an innocent young woman intentionally and without any semblance of justification or excuse," he said. "She was a total stranger to you and had done you no harm.

She died in the most appalling way. "Your crime has shocked the small community of Norfolk Island, it has sickened the people of Australia, it demands severe punishment." The conviction of an outsider came as a relief to the 1,300 closely-knit permanent residents of the self-governing Australian territory, who had fallen under suspicion after the brutal killing. Most are descendants of the British sailors who staged the famous mutiny on the Bounty, and their Tahitian wives, who settled on the abandoned former British penal colony in 1856.

Patton, like McNeill, was one of several hundred outsiders working on the pretty island, where tourism is the main source of income. McNeill will serve his sentence in Australia because, in an irony of history, there is now no jail in the former penal colony, which lies some 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) from the capital Canberra. He will be eligible for parole after a minimum of 18 years.