A British businessman jailed for 20 years in France for bludgeoning his fiancee to death has been released from prison after serving less than two years of his sentence.
Ian Griffin, 47, was found guilty in December 2014 of murdering 36-year-old Kinga Legg, a Polish-born millionaire, in a suite at the five-star Bristol hotel in Paris in May 2009.
Legg’s family have called for an inquiry after it was reported that a French judge ordered Griffin’s release during a closed hearing in October and that he is now living in the Alsace region of north-east France.
Speaking to the Mail on Sunday outside his home, Griffin said he was not allowed to talk about the conditions of his release. Asked how he thought Legg’s family would react to the news of his freedom, he said: “I don’t know if they know. Nothing in the world would make me feel better than to make Kinga’s parents feel better. But I can’t.”
Legg’s cousin Eva knew nothing about Griffin’s release until she was approached by the paper. “Oh my God! How can this be? I thought that life meant life. You take a life and you pay for it by forfeiting your own freedom,” she is quoted as saying. “We all thought he was in jail and that was where he was staying. How could they let him out?”
Legg’s naked body was found in a three-quarters filled bath in the blood-stained hotel suite, which investigators described as a scene of frenzied violence. She had suffered 100 injuries, including 17 to the head and 33 to the thorax.
The court heard that Griffin had attempted to clean the £1,000-a-night room, phoning reception twice to say the couple would be extending their stay and putting a “do not disturb” sign on the door.
Griffin, who admitted being addicted to alcohol and antidepressants at the time, fled the scene in his Porsche 911 the day before hotel staff discovered the body. Following a police manhunt, he was found sleeping rough in a tent in a wood in Cheshire. He was extradited to France in 2011.
The businessman, who reportedly developed a severe neurological disease in jail, had his murder conviction upheld following an appeal in April last year, but his sentence was reduced to 14 years.
During the five-day trial in 2014, Griffin claimed his mind had gone blank and that he was unable remember the evening his partner was killed. He suggested that Legg’s death was accidental and that she may have fallen backwards, banging her head on a table.
The prosecution portrayed Griffin as a violent man and described how he once drove his Mercedes through the front door of Legg’s mansion in Oxshott, Surrey. The court also heard that he had attacked her a month before she was beaten to death.
Legg, who was born Kinga Wolf, made her money running a tomato export company. She met Griffin in Monaco in 2008 and the couple were planning to marry in August 2009. Warrington-born Griffin admitted, however, that he had been also seeing Tracy Baker, 34, who appeared on the television show Dragons’ Den.
