New doubt raised as nurse tells of second murder at Saudi hospital

Details are emerging of the murder of a second nurse at the hospital where Yvonne Gilford was beaten and stabbed. While Deborah Parry and Lucille McLauchlan protest their innocence over her killing, Steve Boggan examines chilling similarities between the two murders.

When they found Liberty de Guzman, she had been beaten, strangled, stabbed and left for dead in her room at the King Fahd Military Medical Centre in Dhahran.

It is a case the Saudis do not like to talk about. When The Independent asked about it a week ago, no details were forthcoming. No one at the hospital would discuss it; neither would Saudi journalists.

Yesterday, however, a nurse who used to work at the hospital came forward and told how Mrs de Guzman met her death in similar circumstances to Yvonne Gilford. Furthermore, she described how Mrs de Guzman's husband was arrested for her murder and was later found dead in a prison cell.

Incredibly, he was supposed to have committed suicide by repeatedly banging his head on a washbasin.

The murder, in 1994, was described by Sharon Markula, 28, who now lives in Brisbane, Australia. She spoke out following a television programme in which Rosemary Kidman, another nurse who had worked in Saudi Arabia, announced - without any hard evidence - that she believed Deborah Parry, 38, and Lucille McLauchlan, 31, had killed 55-year-old Ms Gilford last December.

However, far from throwing her weight behind Ms Kidman's assertion, she gave details of a theory of her own - one which had at least some evidence to support it.

In an interview with Scotland's Daily Record, Ms Markula, who worked at the hospital for two years, said that Ms Gilford, a fellow Australian, had been harassed by security guards in the weeks before her death; so had Mrs de Guzman.

She said both women had received large amounts of back pay before they were murdered. Both had been beaten and stabbed; Mrs de Guzman, a Filipina, was strangled, Ms Gilford was suffocated. And she claimed that a security guard had "gone missing" shortly after each death.

"The British girls are innocent - a killer is still on the loose," she said. "I always thought the murderer would strike again. Yvonne's death is like a copycat killing. It has to be the same person who's responsible."

Lawyers acting for the British nurses have imposed a news blackout while they negotiate over "blood money" with Frank Gilford, Ms Gilford's brother.

Ms McLauchlan has already been found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison and 500 lashes but Ms Parry still awaits her fate. If she is found guilty of "intentional murder", Mr Gilford's acceptance of blood money will prevent her being beheaded.

Sources close to the nurses say the lawyers were aware of the case and were shocked by it. But they were refused permission to refer to it or to present any other evidence at the women's trial.

Ms Markula, 28, said Ms de Guzman's husband was arrested for her murder and died six weeks later. Staff at the hospital did not believe he killed her as he was at the compound security gate at the time of the murder.

"Liberty was living in fear because her room had been broken into twice," said Ms Markula. "She was terrified because only the security guards had a copy of the room key. Someone had got in and left a cigarette butt in her kitchen. It was like a calling card to warn her she was being watched. The same thing happened to Yvonne and she was keeping a diary of the break-ins and weird phone calls before she died."

Ms Markula said staff at the hospital understood that a bank card supposedly taken from Ms Gilford's room and used after her murder actually went missing a month before she was killed.

Senior officials at the Saudi Arabian embassy in London denied knowledge of Ms de Guzman's murder yesterday.

A written request for further information was ignored.