The wife of a Dublin-born pensioner found dead in Gambia is being held by police after confessing to knocking him unconscious before dragging him from their beachside home and setting him alight.
In initial interviews, African-born Kate West (26), told Gambian police that five Nigerian men took her 76-year-old husband William from their four-bedroom home in the fishing village of Sanyang and killed him.
But Gambia police assistant superintendent Aziz Bojang said she has since told officers that she killed Dublin-born businessman Mr West, who lived in Hastings, East Sussex.
Mr Bojang said they were treating her claims with caution, saying they could not rule out the possibility of accomplices being involved.
Mrs West led officers to a bag containing the charred remains of her husband's body just outside the perimeter fence of their property, police said.
"She has told police that she hit him over the head with a heavy object which we are still trying to recover," Mr Bojang said. "She then said she dragged him out of the apartment to the main yard and set him alight using wood and foil. She has told us that she murdered her husband on her own, without anyone's help.
"This is the latest of several stories she has given us, and whether that is true or not, it is not possible to say. What we are in the process of doing at the moment is verifying the various stories she has told us.
"We are still not ruling out the possibility that accomplices were involved in the murder."
Police were told that Mr West disappeared while buying cigars in a shop on a day trip to Senegal during a month-long holiday to Gambia with his wife on July 3rd. Mrs West returned to the UK without her husband two days after his disappearance and then went back to Gambia with a friend of Mr West's, David Jenkins, to help find him.
She was then arrested by police in Gambia and remains in custody in the capital Banjul as inquiries continue into the murder.
Mr West met his second wife in 2000 and reportedly married her after a few months. His first wife, Doris, died in 1994.
It emerged that Mrs West was a beneficiary in her husband's will, and was in line to inherit the Gambian property they shared.
PA