Brutal Murders In Murky World Of Timeshare

It was an unusually cool January evening in Tenerife as timeshare bosses Billy and Flo Robinson met their senior manager, Chris Collins, and his wife for a regular get-together at one of their favourite restaurants.

The two expat couples chatted over their meal in Teppenyaki, an upmarket Chinese/Japanese restaurant, tucked away above the designer boutiques in the Safari shopping mall, far from the tourist bustle, on the edge of Playa de las Americas, the island's busiest resort on the south-west coast.

The Robinsons set off for home about 10.30pm, though it is unclear whether they were in separate cars. An hour later they were dead, brutally murdered, their bodies dumped at separate locations. Mrs Robinson was found at 11.30pm on January 12, in a pool of blood beside her silver Mercedes, on a single track lane less than 300 metres from their luxury £1m villa at Oroteanda Alta in the San Miguel de Abona region. Mr Robinson's body was not discovered until the morning, on the back seat of his gunmetal-grey Porsche Cayenne on a bleak road behind an industrial estate, Las Chafiras, a few kilometres away.
Officially, police said Mr Robinson, 58, suffered multiple stab wounds, while Mrs Robinson, 55, appeared to have been bludgeoned to death. But the Guardian has been told by another source that both had been tortured and their throats slit. Mrs Robinson suffered horrific mutilation. The killers were also at pains to emphasise how little they cared about the Robinsons' wealth. A £100,000 gold watch remained on Mr Robinson's wrist, and Mrs Robinson's diamond earrings were still in her ears.

"Whoever did this, it was very personal," one source said. "It seems like an act of revenge. They wanted the Robinsons to suffer and those close to them to know that they had suffered."

One theory is that they were chased and rammed off the road by a red 4x4 or other vehicle. Traces of red paint were supposedly found on both cars but police have refused to comment.

The Robinsons, originally from north London, had worked for the notorious John "Goldfinger" Palmer, acquitted of helping to dispose of £26m of gold bullion stolen from Heathrow airport in the Brink's Mat robbery in 1983 but jailed in 2001 for a £30m timeshare fraud involving homes in Tenerife. He served four years. Mrs Robinson was his personal secretary at one time and Mr Robinson was also involved in the business.

After he was jailed the couple started their own business, Global World Travel, incorporating a company called Timelinx, a sort of repackaged timeshare business, where customers bought into a whole-lifetime holiday package rather than the old much-maligned timeshare.

The Robinsons became even richer, but lived a secluded life in their remote villa, going to the same handful of restaurants and bars, mixing with the same friends. Their son, Liam, lives in a house within their heavily fortified complex, while daughter Billee lives with her family in London, to which Mrs Robinson combined regular shopping trips with visits to her grandchildren.

Mr Robinson was said to be a generous but quiet man, never happier than when in the company of the couple's two beloved Jack Russell terriers, Sid and Nancy. "He'd buy you a meal and drinks all night the first night you met him but you could know him a year and he'd hardly speak two sentences to you," said one former employee. "Flo was an angel though, a real mother figure who made everyone feel welcome."

Among their close friends were actor Michelle Collins's mother and stepfather, who house-sat for the Robinsons when they were in London for Christmas, and had planned to return for a holiday with them a few days after the date of the murders.

Four million tourists visit Tenerife each year. But behind the sunshine image lurks an underbelly of violence tied up with some of those involved in the expat timeshare world.

"It's a closed world," said one former worker. "They work together, socialise together, even the sons and daughters marry into other timeshare families. But tread on the wrong man's patch or shag the wrong man's wife and you'll know about it. You'll be threatened, beaten, ordered to leave the island."

It is not that all timeshare businesspeople are fraudsters, said Inspector Trinitario Sanchez, of the National Police, who specialises in investigating timeshare fraud. It is just that where big money is to be made, criminals are drawn like moths to the flame.

Insp Sanchez gets five or six reports a month of tourists being conned, usually British or Germans, and often elderly. Sometimes, the fraudsters will ring existing owners and tell them they have a rich multinational buyer who wants to purchase the entire complex that houses their timeshare and is prepared to pay three times the asking price. They will send over official-looking papers and sometimes even introduce the "buyer". But the deal involves handing over a €900-€1,200 (about £600-£900) "legal fee", after which the "buyer" mysteriously vanishes. One con artist used this ruse to pocket €300,000 in two years.

Other scams tread a thin legal line by getting the timeshare owner to come to Tenerife to meet a potential buyer, but then selling them another package, cruise or holiday, with the promise that this will help seal the deal.

Between companies, the criminality usually involves extortion - move into this patch but at a price, usually 10% of takings.

What happened to the Robinsons may not have come out of the blue. A source told the Guardian that the Robinsons - Billy, Flo and Liam - started getting threats several years ago. It is unclear if these were directed at business interests or something more personal. There are claims that Billy was badly beaten two years ago and required hospital treatment but refused to file a police report.

The couple clearly took security seriously, as the heavily fortified walls around their villa and the video intercom at the gate show. The Guardian met Liam Robinson, still visibly shocked at his parents' murders, outside the villa but he did not want to talk.

The Spanish police have said little about the crime, telling the Guardian they could not discuss it while the investigation is in progress. But an elite police unit, Greco, is being sent to the island in March to try to replicate organised crime clear-ups it has already undertaken in the Costa del Sol.

Spanish politicians have been equally quiet, perhaps fearing harm to Tenerife's tourist trade, and the story quickly dropped out of Spanish newspapers. Tenerife locals see it as an inter-Brit criminal problem they do not want to get involved in.

One theory is that the murderers got off the island that night or the next day. But they would have been drenched in blood, and would have needed a safe house in which to wash themselves and dispose of their clothes, and perhaps private transport to avoid airport CCTV and security checks.

Among the expat British timeshare community, the fear is palpable. Those the Guardian managed to speak to were obviously afraid. All refused to be identified. Two people the Guardian planned to meet backed out at the last minute, one indicating he had been "warned off". Inquiries in pubs were met with silence or nervous comments about not wanting any trouble.

One timeshare gossip internet site is full of allegations about dozens of different companies from disgruntled punters, as well as comments from those connected to the industry, including the sentiment that the Robinsons somehow "had it coming" and anonymous veiled threats to others.

But the mystery of why they were killed remains, along with the ominous feeling that whatever has started is far from over.

Big idea

· Europe's timeshare industry started in the late 1960s from an idea by a German entrepreneur, Alexander Nette. By 2001 the initial handful of resorts had grown to 1,452, comprising 83,000 separate units

· Its original appeal was to offer consumers an affordable compromise between booking a holiday in the same resort each year and owning a holiday home outright. Today 1.4 million people, one third of them British, own timeshares in Europe

· Spain is the most popular country for timeshare resorts, with more than 35% of all European timeshares located there. Of these, more than a third are in the Canary Islands

· Tenerife has more than 8,000 timeshare units, in 104 resorts