Jamaican police are hunting two killers who hacked to death a Bermudian man in the grounds of his holiday home on Friday evening.

Greg Daniels, 52, had gone into his garden to shut the gate when the pair jumped him and attacked him with machetes before raiding the house and taking several thousand dollars in American currency.

Detective Constable Lloyd Broadie told The Royal Gazette: "They pulled him into a little bushy area and chopped him to death. He died instantly."

Mr. Daniels' Bermudian common law wife Lucinda Washington, 47, saw the men, jumped into the family's pick up truck with her 10-year-old grandchild and drove to the Police station in the quiet parish of Hanover.

But it took Police, aided by locals, more than three hours to find the body after the 8 p.m machete attack because it was so well hidden in the undergrowth at the four acre property.

DC Broadie said a team was now hunting the murderers although there was little information to go on.

He said it was believed the killers were from the neighbourhood which he said was normally very peaceful.

He said: "It's very, very shocking. It's very quiet here. It's the quietest parish in Jamaica when it comes to crime.

"Our theory is they are local. Our investigations are pointing us in that direction."

Mr. Daniels typically used the home for two months at a time and then was gone again said DC Broadie who had known the victim for about five years.

Mr. Daniels, a welder, had been in Jamaica for several months and had just finished building his dream home in the neighbourhood.

He had planned to move there said his distraught sister Sandra Fubler.

She said: "It was his dream to live in Jamaica. He loved it down there."

Her brother was a peace-loving person said Mrs. Fubler.

"He was very down-to-earth. I am just dumbfounded, really. I can't even visualise it. It's hard to talk about it.

"It's a very nice neighbourhood where everyone knew each other and got along."

She believes Mr. Daniels' attackers must have got wind that his girlfriend had just arrived and would be likely to be carrying money.

She said: "I am convinced that money was the motivation for the attack."

A spokeswoman for Jamaican Police admitted it had been a bad weekend for murders with six or seven registered by Saturday night and the figure could reach double figures by the end of Sunday.

Four died in Jamaica's capital Kingston in separate shootings that pushed the murder toll for the year to nearly 600.

The spokeswoman said: "It was a bad weekend but we have had them before. I am not saying it is the worst."

Police Commissioner Francis Forbes has said Jamaica's anti-crime plan of curfews, military patrols and community policing was failing to meet his goal of reducing Jamaica's murder rate by 20 percent.

He pointed to the northern tourist town of Montego Bay as a major contributor to the violence, with 60 killings so far this year, 11 more than during the same period last year.

National Security Minister Peter Phillips was set to announce new measures to curb the bloodshed last night.

Mr. Daniels' 30-year-old daughter flew out to Jamaica yesterday. He is survived by two sisters and a mother.