A British man, on Europe’s ‘most wanted list’ for his part in the brutal murder of a man who was tortured to death in front of his children, is to be extradited to the UK to face trial after a fingerprint analysis left no doubt that the man in the dock was the wanted man.
Christopher Guest More is wanted by Cheshire police for the murder of Brian Waters in June 2003. Three other men John Wilson, 69, James Raven, 60, and Otis Matthews, 41 - are all serving life sentences for the murder.
Waters had been tortured and beaten to death in front of his two adult children, who were forced to watch the murder at gunpoint. Together with the other men, More is alleged to stormed a remote property - where Waters was running a cannabis farm - to demand money.
UK Police said that after the gang’s demands for money were refused, the men had assaulted the five people in the house, beating Waters so badly that he died at the scene.
The men tied Waters to a chair before brutally beating him in front of his son, who was also attacked, and and his 21-year-old daughter who was held at gunpoint and forced to watch.
Waters, 44, was whipped, burned, attacked with a staple gun, hung upside down and beaten and sexually assaulted with an iron bar, in a three-hour ordeal during which he sustained 123 injuries.
Guest More is also wanted for the attempted murder of a second man and for the false imprisonment and assault of the other victims who were present during the incident.
The man was arrested in Malta after a covert operation involving Maltese and British police which had him under surveillance for a number of days before the arrest. The fugitive was found to have been using a false identity in a bid to escape detection.
Guest More had resisted his extradition, his lawyer Arthur Azzopardi arguing that he is not the same person requested by the British authorities.
However, a fingerprint expert compared the man’s prints to the finger-prints annexed to the European Arrest Warrant for to the fugitive Christopher Guest More and found them to match. “The fingerprints patterns were identical with each other on every particular finger when compared to one another” read his report and in concluding, “all the prints were found to be positively identical, hence belong to the same person.”
“Thus, any lingering doubts as to the true identity of the person appearing before the Court of Committal, are hereby entirely dispelled now that the issue as to the identity of the person appearing before this Court has been definitively determined beyond any doubt whatsoever,” said the court, ordering the extradition to proceed.
Guest More is expected to appeal the decision.