Poker Pro could face extradition in wife’s murder

A British poker pro has been accused of murdering his wife in Colorado in 1997 and is currently trying to avoid extradition to the United States. He has also been refused bail because “He has a strong incentive to flee the jurisdiction” according to High Court Prosecutor Gemma Lindfield.

Poker player, Marcus Bebb-Jones was arrested in September 2009 in the UK after the US Government started extradition proceedings against him.

Before his wife Sabrina was murdered, she and Bebb-Jones ran a hotel in Grand Junction, Colorado. It is alleged that Bebb-Jones murdered Sabrina on September 16, 1997 and in to following days headed to Las Vegas where he ran up credit cards in both his and Sabrina’s names. In that weekend he also gave different accounts to several witnesses as to his wife’s whereabouts.

In 2009, Aron Watkins, prosecuting for the US Government told the City of Westminster Coroner’s Court; “Mr Bebb-Jones is sought for the murder of his wife. He is responsible for the murder, and the deliberate concealment of it for many years…He lived a playboy lifestyle in the course of that weekend which culminated in him putting a gun in his mouth and shooting himself in the head. Whether by judgement or design he didn’t cause any life-threatening injuries to himself…The upshot is that the case against him is very strong. This offence is so serious he faces life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”

It was claimed that between his wife’s disappearance and the discovery of her skull in a field by a Garfield County rancher in 2004, Bebb-Jones “sought no information as to her whereabouts”, and that he can now be matched to “blood deposits” found in his van, and by “particular type of thistles found near the wheel arch” and the field where her skull was found.

The extradition process is likely to take months but, in the meantime a Colorado prosecutor has agreed not to seek the death penalty in line with England’s extradition treaty.