A Bermudian has been jailed for 40 years in the United States for murdering his girlfriend, according to a news report last night.

VSB said Clyde Brookes, 38, was given the jail sentence in St. Petersburg, Florida, for stabbing to death his live-in girlfriend Denise Lizotte, also known as Denise Hanson, on Easter Sunday last year.

Neither Pinellas County Court, Florida, where Brookes was charged, nor the St. Petersburg Police Service, could be contacted last night to confirm the story.

And the St. Petersburg Times, which covered the case initially in April last year, last night had no information about the outcome of the Brookes case.

The body of Ms Lizotte, who was wearing a bathrobe and was covered in stab wounds, was found about a mile from where the couple lived in Oldsmar, Florida.

According to the arrest records at Pinellas County Court, Brookes was a Bermudian who was born on the Island, who worked for an electrical company.

At the time of his arrest, the St. Petersburg Times quoted the the dead woman's sister Jennifer Martinez as saying Brookes gave an "Oscar-winning performance" when she asked him about the disappearance.

"He led us to believe she just upped and left. Several times he got choked up like he was going to cry. Obviously he gave an Oscar-winning performance. He kept telling me he loved her and that she was his greatest love," she told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, Police in New Jersey have yet to identify any suspects in the execution style murders of Bermudian Antoine Smith and his Jamaican girlfriend Roxanne Fong Woo.

The couple, both 30, were found bound and shot in their New Jersey home in May 2000.

Also unresolved, is the investigation of the murder of Bermudian Michael Eugene Edward Wilson, 40, who was shot several times in his apartment in East Orange, New Jersey, in early September last year.

The Essex County Prosecutors office confirmed yesterday that no one had been identified as suspects in either case. And a spokesperson could not say whether any new information had come to light to aid the investigations.