Killing of British expat on Malaysian island of Langkawi exposes darker side of retiring to paradise

As the sun sank over the sea off Langkawi on October 17, Britons John and Samantha Jones sat drinking with friends at a bar on Cenang Beach, laughing and joking as they basked in the evening warmth on the tropical Malaysian island that had been their home for 11 years. It was the last sunset John would ever see. Hours later, the burly 63-year-old was lying dead, a kitchen knife having been thrust into his chest in the bedroom of his retirement villa, less than 5km from Cenang Beach, while Samantha was in police custody, accused of his murder.

The killing of the former fireman has sent shock waves through the peaceful island, which is home to hundreds of Britons and Europeans, many of whom, like the Joneses, flocked there in the past two decades under Malaysia’s My Second Home programme. It has also shed an uncomfortable light on the alcohol-saturated and sometimes rudderless lifestyles of the middle-aged expatriates who leave their extended families and home countries behind to live out what, on the surface, appears to be idyllic, carefree lives in the country ranked the best place in Asia in which to retire.

As Samantha Jones, 51, was being charged with her husband’s murder – an offence that carries a mandatory sentence of death by hanging under Malaysian law – Post Magazine spoke to friends, neighbours and investigating officers to piece together the last hours of John Jones, and the dark undercurrents that dragged the couple’s life in Langkawi to its bloody denouement.

Migration and mass tourism have transformed Langkawi into an island with two distinct characters. The hinterland is a lush agriculture backwater and home to a quiet, conservative Muslim majority population living in simple homes and meeting in tea shops in the evenings. The west coast is a brash seaside playground where expats and tourists from around the world kick back in cheap restaurants, raucous bars and budget resorts, enjoying some of Asia’s cheapest alcohol, thanks to the island’s duty free status.

John and Samantha, his second wife and a former insurance clerk from the English county of Somerset, where John, from Worcestershire, last worked, as a chief fire officer, divided their retirement between the two sides of the island. Their days were spent in a tiny inland hamlet straddling a winding village road 3km from the coast and just inland from Halia village. They were the hamlet’s first expat residents, building an incongruously modern, single-storey villa with a swimming pool and sun deck looking out over fields and rice paddies.

Their evenings, by contrast, were often spent in the other Langkawi – in mostly Western-run bars and restaurants in which drink flowed freely. John, riding his Harley-Davidson, and Samantha, on a small orange moped, were a regular sight and pivotal characters in the close-knit expat community.