Last month, The Northern Echo told of a businessman waiting to hear if he will be deported to Singapore to face trial over a double killing. In an exclusive interview from inside his Australian prison, Michael McCrea tells Simon Atkinson of his fear that, if he is extradited, he faces almost certain death.
TERRIFIED. Fear. Nightmares. Words that come time and time again from the mouth of Michael McCrea. Embroiled in a bloody incident at his rented Singapore apartment, the 45-year-old businessman is wanted for double murder.
Ever since the decaying corpses of chauffeur Kho Nai Guan and the driver's girlfriend Lan Ya Ming were discovered stuffed in the back of his limousine in January last year, McCrea has been prime suspect.
Covered in rose petals and candle wax, one body was wrapped in a red blanket, another stuffed in a wicker basket that served as a coffee table in the luxury flat.
After going on the run - first to England and then to Australia - MCrea has now spent 15 months as a maximum security prisoner in a Melbourne jail, anxiously waiting to hear if he will be sent back to Singapore to be tried over the killings.
And in Singapore, a crime as serious as murder carries one mandatory penalty. Death.
To try and persuade Australia to extradite the dad-of-four, the Singapore law ministry has given assurances that if McCrea were convicted, he would not hang. But McCrea's lawyers - who have taken advice from constitutional experts in Singapore - are arguing that the promise would not be binding.
And their client has no doubt he would be convicted.
Speaking from inside Port Philip Prison, set at the end of a dusty road in an industrial Melbourne suburb, miner's son McCrea, who spent the first three years of his life in Penshaw, near Washington, says: "If I go over there, I will hang. I admit it, I'm terrified."
McCrea's co-accused, his 23-year-old Singaporean girlfriend Audrey Ong, is already serving 12 years after admitting disposing of evidence earlier this year - cleaning blood from the flat and plotting to have the bodies removed.
It was a hearing that prompted panic from McCrea - sacking his first legal team and doubling his efforts to avoid being sent back. Scrabbling frantically through his dossier of papers about the case, McCrea found what he was looking for - something he says proves his point. It was Ong's charge sheet.
"This says it all", he insists. "Audrey was convicted of getting rid of evidence but the exact wording is 'after a murder which has been committed by one Michael McCrea.' They've already decided I'm a murderer.
"It's a foregone conclusion that if I have a trial there, I'll be found guilty. There are no juries, just a judge. There's no way I could get a fair trial."
On remand for 15 months, McCrea revealed he has nightmares about the hanging and that he has started writing a book about his experiences. And he said he was sick of waiting for a decision on his fate from the Australian justice minister, Chris Ellison - and unsurprisingly agrees with his lawyers that the promises made by Singapore may not save him.
"I've been waiting and waiting and still no decision.," he says. "I want a decision now. I don't think it's fair. I think he's taking so long because the minister knows he can't send me back to Singapore but doesn't want to upset anyone.
"I'm married to an Australian. I have two Australian boys, but they won't protect me. And I've been disappointed with the British consulate. Their people just keep saying there's nothing they can do."
A spokesman for the Singapore law ministry says: "If the death penalty is imposed on McCrea upon conviction of the offence(s) on which his extradition is sought, the death penalty will not be carried out", adding that the promise not to execute McCrea is legally binding under the Singapore Constitution.
But McCrea and his lawyers aren't prepared to take chances.
"The bottom line is that this undertaking not to kill me is worthless," McCrea says. "Under Singapore law you have to be convicted before you can be considered for a pardon, then it has to go through appeal after appeal.
"It would cause a big stink over there if I was convicted and got off the death penalty. People will say, 'It's because he is white.'. I'll be on death row for three or four years before I could even get a pardon, but it won't happen."
He adds: "Every day I think about being hanged. One Singaporean solicitor came to see me and talked me graphically through what happens.
"I don't know what he was trying to achieve but he was giving me all the details - drums banging as you walk to the gallows, having to look your accuser in the eye, it happening at daybreak." A pause. "Horrible."
McCrea was arrested at his wife's home in Melbourne in May last year. Initially he was picked up for entering Australia on a false passport - an offence discovered after police were called to a domestic row over McCrea's relationship with Ong.
Then he was re-arrested on an international warrant for the Singapore killings and has been classed as a maximum security prisoner ever since.
"I've been on remand for 15 months and I've not even been formally charged with anything. But they still rotate me to a different cell every month, and I get regularly strip searched."
He can still wander around the prison's yard once every hour, enjoying Melbourne's bright winter days. And McCrea no longer has to greet visiting friends and family through a Perspex partition.
McCrea's wife Brunetta visits every two weeks, usually on a Saturday morning, bringing him a packet of cigarettes - "always unopened, preferably Silk Cut".
With her are their two sons, Connor, who is almost four, and Callum, who, at seven months old, was conceived shortly before McCrea's arrest. "I can hold him and feed him when they come to visit", he says. "They miss their father."
Their pictures are on the wall of his cell, along with those of Steven and Emma - children from his first marriage, who still live in Nottingham with his ex-wife.
Then there is the book - a yet untitled novel based on the case but written in the third person. "I've done about 80 pages so far, just written on A4. I'm up to the point where I'm about to leave London for Australia. This is the true story of what happened. I want it published."
McCrea moved to Singapore in 1984 to work for financial institutions, before setting up a company offering financial advice for expats. He also wrote a book called The Ex-Pats Survival Guide under the pseudonym Mike Townsend - the name on the false passport with which he entered Australia. He returned to the UK in 1995 and married Brunetta, before returning to Singapore in 1997.
McCrea gets more edgy when talking about the case itself, and is still coy about exactly what happened in January 2002 in his rented apartment.
Official post mortem examinations concluded both Mr Kho and Miss Lan died from strangulation - but McCrea has hired an independent doctor to study the evidence and says his findings will support his case.
He alleges that his chauffeur Mr Kho, a 46-year-old father-of-three, attacked him in a bungled robbery attempt, forcing him to fight back. He then tried to save Mr Kho, performing heart massage on the man Brunetta has described as being "like a brother" to McCrea.
Miss Lan, a 30-year-old teacher, illegally in Singapore from China, also helped him, says McCrea.
"Kho was drug-crazed and came at me. I was defending myself against him," he says. "I got bad injuries and have scars on my head and hand. I was knocked out for a while.
"I acted in self defence. I'm not guilty of murder. I was negligent to leave the scene but what else could I do? I had no chance. I had to leave."
Now he waits for the call to tell him if he must go back.
Because he was originally arrested on an immigration matter, McCrea's lawyers think he has a good chance of being deported to the UK if the Australian government does not grant Singapore's extradition request.
"I've no doubt that Singapore will apply to extradite me from Britain, but I will be safe there. I'll have human rights law on my side and I'll be safe."
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