A letter from Bertil: Bertil Fox is serving a life sentence for double murder on the island of St. Kitts. In this FLEX exclusive, he gives his version of what happened on that fateful day in 1997

Flex, Dec, 2005 by Greg Merritt

"Lord knows, [Bertil Fox] had never asked much from life. All he ever
wanted was his own gym ..."
--Rick Wayne, Muscle Wars (1985)

"I wonder if you remember what you told me when I said to you that I was
going back to St. Kitts to open a gym and build property, etc. You said
to me, 'Bertil, you don't know anyone down there. England is where you
spent all your life.' My friend, I wish I had listened to you."
--Bertil Fox in a letter to Chris Lund

On May 22, 1998, bodybuilder Bertil Fox was convicted of murdering his former fiancee and her mother on the tiny Caribbean isle of St. Kitts.

Now, in a 24-page handwritten letter to FLEX chief photographer Chris Lund, Fox details his version of what happened on that tragic day when two lives ended and his life changed forever. Here, in this FLEX exclusive, is the story of the murders, their reportage and the events surrounding them in Fox's own words.

THE FACTS | This much we know for certain. On September 30, 1997, in the island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis (population: 39,000), 20-year-old beauty queen Leyoca Browne and her mother, 36-year-old Violet Browne, were fatally shot with a gun owned by Bertil Fox, then 46. Fox, who previously had been engaged to Leyoca and was at the scene of the crime when the shootings occurred, was arrested and charged with the murders.

His first trial ended in a hung jury, split five to four for acquittal. After much public outrage about the lack of a guilty verdict, he was retried, convicted and sentenced to hang. British human rights lawyers appealed, and Fox's automatic death sentence was ruled unconstitutional; he was resentenced to life in prison. He remains in a St. Kitts prison today.

THE PRESS | Fox is very critical of what he perceives as the unfair reportage he and his trial received. Stories frequently referenced "'roid rage" and the presumed aggression and insecurity of bodybuilders.

One of the people Fox singles out is Rick Wayne. Formerly a champion bodybuilder, an accomplished bodybuilding writer and the associate publisher of FLEX, Wayne is now a newspaper publisher and a political commentator in his native St. Lucia (a Caribbean island neighboring St. Kitts).

In a British TV documentary, Wayne claimed Fox dislikes white people. Fox writes to Lund: "I have never told him that. I am no bloody racist, you know that. Please, if you write anything from these letters, please put that straight for me. Most of my friends are white, including girlfriends."

THE CORRUPTION | Fox alleges that the judge and the jury at the second trial were biased against him. The foreperson was a friend of the family of the murder victims. Two other jurors reportedly complained to the judge regarding this conflict, but the judge refused to intervene.

Fox writes: "In the Caribbean, with a small island like St. Kitts where everybody knows everybody, it's very dangerous--especially for someone like me who did not grow up here and just came here to open a business, bought land and built premises.... It's who you know and who knows you that counts in these parts of the world.

"My conviction was because of an opportunist liar called Edmund Tross, who was supposed to be a friend, and his girlfriend, Julisca Wallace, and their greed for my gym business and property. And the corrupt flawed jury system that they use here that I mention about at the start of the letter. When the incident happened, I had no one to run the gym for me, and I had to keep the gym open because of a small mortgage I had to pay on the premises because of that same Edmund Tross, but that's another story." [Tross began running Fox's Gym after his friend's arrest.]

According to Fox, Tross, an electrician by trade, said he wanted to take financial control of Fox's gym, house and money to protect it from a potential lawsuit from the victims' family. Fox refused. Instead, Fox put the property in the name of his eldest daughter, Dorette, and he gave Tross power of attorney to withdraw money from his bank account to pay for his defense. Tross then allegedly turned Dorette against her father and convinced her to sell him Fox's property for a fraction of its worth.

Tross was a witness for the prosecution in the preliminary trial, first trial and the retrial, He was allowed to change his testimony each time. In the retrial, he claimed Fox confessed to the murders because Fox discovered Leyoca was seeing another man (no such man was named or came forward).

Furthermore, just before the second trial drew to a close, there was a surprise witness who had not testified in the preliminary trial or previous trial: Julisca Wallace. Wallace said she saw Fox with the gun shortly before the shootings, and Fox supposedly told her he was going to kill his ex-girlfriend. The judge did not allow Fox to take the stand again to refute Wallace's allegations.

THE PROSECUTION | Prosecutors alleged Fox was despondent when Leyoca ended their relationship. In their version, Fox, in a jealous rage, brought his pistol to Violet's clothing store, where Leyoca worked. He shot Leyoca in the back, fatally wounding her. Violet was also fatally shot.