Conman Gets Life for Murdering Gay Lover He Met on Fitlads
Glenn Rycroft to serve a minimum of 25 years
A ruthless conman and former British Airways steward was jailed for life yesterday for murdering the gay lover he met through Fitlads.
Glenn Rycroft, 33, battered Gareth MacDonald, 30, to death with an 8kg fire extinguisher in a Travelodge at Heston Services on the M4.
The gay couple had been seeing each other for 2 years and had set up a travel agency together. However MacDonald had become suspicious of Rycroft’s motives and had discovered he had been stealing money from his bank account.
Two weeks later while travelling to London together to repay money owed to Rycroft’s relatives they stayed at the M4 Travelodge near Heathrow airport. Rycroft, angered at being exposed, killed his lover by inflicting blows to his head with a fire extinguisher.
In his defence, Rycroft claimed he had left MacDonald in the hotel room with a male escort and that he must have been the killer. However the blood on his shoes and the fingerprints on the fire extinguisher gave him away.
Particularly damning was that the victim suffered 2 blows to his head from the fire extinguisher several minutes apart. This proved that Rycroft’s motives were to deliberately murder MacDonald, and were pre-meditated.
Rycroft had been previously jailed for fraud after he had conned over £200,000 out of relatives and friends and met MacDonald just after he had been released after serving 2 years of his 4 year sentence.
MacDonald was a care worker who had left his wife and children for his gay lover.
At the Old Bailey yesterday the Judge Timothy Pontias jailed Rycroft for murder and ordered that he serve a minimum of 25 years, adding “You are not only a thoroughly dishonest man but also a thoroughly unscrupulous and utterly cold-hearted one.”
by staff writer
(c) Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
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