William Horncy (born 1954) is a British murderer who achieved notoriety in 2005 when he was convicted of murdering millionaire Amarjit Chohan as well as Chohan's wife, mother-in-law and two sons. The bodies of Chohan's two sons were never found.
Horncy was sentenced to life imprisonment and on 23 February 2008 The Times reported that he was among 50 prisoners who were issued with whole life tariffs and are unlikely ever to be released.
Two men have been found guilty of murdering a millionaire and his family in order to take over his business.
The bodies of Amarjit Chohan, his wife and her mother, from west London, were washed up on the south coast in 2003. Their two children have not been found.
Career criminal Kenneth Regan, 54, of Wiltshire, and his accomplice William Horncy, 51, of Dorset, were convicted of murdering all three generations.
Peter Rees was convicted of Mr Chohan's murder but cleared of the other four.
The 38-year-old, from Portsmouth, Hants, was also convicted of assisting an offender following the eight-month trial.
Indian-born Mr Chohan, his 25-year-old wife Nancy, their two young sons, Devinder and Ravinder, and Mrs Chohan's mother, Charanjit Kaur, 51, disappeared from their Hounslow home in February 2003.
Regan, a convicted drug dealer and police informant, planned to take over Mr Chohan's successful CIBA freight company to use it as a front for importing drugs.
He wanted to make people think the 46-year-old, who was known as a "chancer" and had been to prison for tax evasion, had given up his business and gone abroad, the trial was told.
So he lured Mr Chohan to Stonehenge, Wiltshire, held him against his will for several days, gagged him and forced him to sign over his company before murdering him.
The jury, which took 13 days to come to its verdict, was told how the plan would have worked had it not been for Mrs Chohan's brother, Onkar Verma, in New Zealand.
He refused to accept that his mother, his sister and her family would have just vanished.
As police inquiries were about to turn to a farm in Tiverton, Devon, where the defendants had buried the family, the men returned to the farm to dig up the bodies.
The trial heard that on Easter Sunday 2003 the bodies were taken out to sea and dumped.
Two days later, Mr Chohan's body was found floating in the water near Bournemouth pier. His wife's body was found in the same area that July and Mrs Kaur was found in November in a bay off the Isle of Wight.
Paul Mendelle, defending Regan, said he "would have had to be desperate beyond belief to slaughter an entire family for the sake of a business".
After the conviction his legal team maintained he was innocent and was planning to appeal.
Police still do not know how Mr Chohan died and have said they will be asking the men to tell them where to find the bodies of two-month old Ravinder and 18-month-old Devinder.
Det Ch Insp Dave Little, who led the investigation, said it was a crime "utterly beyond the comprehension of decent society".
"A young family, a new family, was entirely wiped out at the hands of these murderous men, in an attempt to line their own pockets," he said.
A Chohan family friend, Suresh Grover, read out a statement on behalf of Mr Verma saying: "The last two years have been a living nightmare.
"The deliberate, premeditated slaughter of my innocent family is akin to me being given a life sentence - a life with no laughter, no happiness and no joy."
The murder trial, which cost more than £10m, is thought to be the longest in the history of the Metropolitan Police and of the Old Bailey.
Title: William Horncy, The Murder Of Amarjit Chohan And His Family : Crime Documentary
Published on Apr 12, 2016
Uploaded by:
Serial Killers Around The World
