ROAD TOWN, British Virgin Islands — A jury Thursday convicted William Labrador of New York of the murder of Lois Livingston McMillen, accepting the testimony of a convicted con man and rejecting the defendant's insistence that he had nothing to do with the death of the attractive former model and artist.

The jury of seven women and two men deliberated for seven and a half hours before returning the guilty verdict.

Labrador, 37, appeared to be trembling as the jury stood as one and pronounced him guilty of killing McMillen by drowning on Jan. 14, 2000. Labrador, a former modeling agency executive who testified that he barely knew the victim, said nothing as the verdict was read.

Barbara Labrador of Long Island, the defendant's mother, put her hands over her face as the verdict was read about 8:15 p.m. Labrador lowered her head and let out a loud shrill as the sentence of life in prison was promptly imposed by Justice Kenneth Benjamin. Barbara Labrador's daughter, Honey Labrador of California, shook her head several times and tried to console her mother.

Police officers quickly moved toward William Labrador and placed him in handcuffs.

"Take him away immediately," Benjamin commanded from the bench.

William Labrador was led out past the jury through a side door and ushered into a waiting police car. A caravan of three police vehicles sped out of the courtyard, tires screeching and almost hitting some in the crowd that had grown steadily throughout the evening. About 100 people waited for hours near the downtown courthouse while the jury deliberated. At times, it had a carnival-like atmosphere.

Crowd listens to radio coverage of the jury deliberations

Back inside the courtroom, Barbara Labrador turned to the victim's parents, Russell McMillen and Josephine McMillen of Middlebury, Conn. "You have done your daughter a great disservice. The person who did this to her is still out there," Barbara Labrador said.

The McMillens, escorted by one of several U.S.-based private investigators they hired to assist police, left without talking to reporters. They could not immediately be reached for comment and have indicated that they might have nothing to say about the trial that began April 2 and lasted six weeks.

Barbara Labrador stayed in the courtroom for several minutes after the police caravan, including a vehicle carrying several heavily armed police officers in paramilitary uniforms, raced her son back to Her Majesty's Prison at Balsam Ghut.

A van hired by a CBS television crew stopped in front of the courthouse and Labrador was ushered in by a producer.

"They bought this conviction. This is a world of corruption," she screamed as the door was slammed.

The men and women of the jury who listened to the testimony of 23 witnesses, including William Labrador, left the courthouse in small groups and refused to talk to reporters.

Earlier Thursday evening, at about 6:30 p.m., the jury told Benjamin that they were deadlocked 7 to 2 and unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The panel did not indicate at that time whether the majority favored conviction.

Benjamin noted that the trial was a long one and asked jurors to go back into the jury room and try again to reach a unanimous verdict. At the jury's request, Benjamin read a transcript of a prison informant's testimony that Labrador confessed to drowning McMillen after a heated argument over money.

The informant, 59-year-old Jeffrey Plante of Plano, Texas, remains jailed here on the island of Tortola as he awaits trial on 32 counts of obtaining property by fraud. Plante, who has a long history of check kiting, was the key witness in the prosecution's case against Labrador.

According to testimony, Plante gave similar testimony against a defendant in a Hawaii murder case in 1995. Labrador's defense lawyer argued that both vague confessions were too similar to be coincidental and accused Plante of concocting a story about Labrador to win favor with prosecutors and avoid being extradited to Texas for violating parole.

In his own defense, Labrador testified May 3 and May 4 that he arrived at his friend's villa alone about 11:48 p.m. on the night McMillen was killed, watched TV and went to bed.

Another witness testified to hearing screams below her bedroom window on the other side of the island about midnight. McMillen's body was found near that witness's home, laying face up on the rocky shoreline, the following morning.

In his instructions to the jury Thursday morning, Benjamin said the case boiled down to whether Plante or Labrador were lying. Both witnesses, according to the judge's summation, made statements that could either be construed as lies or unimportant contradictions. He stressed that jurors alone, as finders of fact, must determine the difference.

"If you believe [Labrador's] testimony, you must find him not guilty. If you believe his story could be true, you must give him the benefit of the doubt and return a verdict of not guilty," Benjamin said.

The verdict in favor of the prosecution comes a week after prosecutors Theodore Guerra and Terrence Williams lost a key legal battle. Benjamin ruled that they presented insufficient evidence of murder against three of Labrador's friends and co-defendants, who were released.

"I'm shocked," Michael Spicer, a 37-year-old Virginia man among those released, said by telephone Thursday night after learning of Labrador's conviction. Spicer's family owns a house near a villa owned by McMillen's family. He knew Lois McMillen for over 20 years and he and his friends socialized with her during the two nights prior to her death, when all claim they did not see or talk to her.

The other released men are Evan George, 23, of Washington D.C., and Alexander Benedetto, 35, of New York City. Benedetto dated McMillen in 1997 and told friends the relationship was intimate. The evidence against Labrador included his statement to police that as far as he knew, none of the suspects had ever been intimate with McMillen.

Another piece of evidence was Labrador's statement to Spicer that he should not contact the McMillen family after learning of Lois McMillen's death because there was a "criminal investigation"; at the time, the men had not been informed how she died or whether it was foul play.

Labrador's family vowed to appeal the verdict, which they called unjust and the product of collusion between police, prosecutors and a convicted felon.

As she stroked her sobbing mother's back with one hand, Honey Labrador turned to McMillen's parents in the courtroom and remarked, "I hope you are proud of yourself. We know what you know."