A MAN freed from jail after serving only one-third of his sentence for the attempted murder of a Hampshire tourist is facing the death penalty in the USA after butchering a young woman.

Michael Seibert used a shoelace to choke an 18-year-old American student before placing her body in the bath, cutting off a hand and foot and flushing chunks of her flesh down the lavatory.

The 1998 crime came less than a year after Seibert won an early release from a Florida jail, having served only ten years of a 30-year sentence for bludgeoning Kathryn Jones from Southampton.

Ms Jones, then 27, was left for dead in a field after being abducted from a telephone box in Miami Beach while on holiday in 1986.

Seibert took her to a secluded field and smashed her head with a porcelain toilet until she passed out, leaving her with severe brain injuries.

When found, she was close to death and spent three weeks in a coma before being flown home to Eastleigh for further extensive treatment at Southampton General Hospital, where she had previously worked as a nurse.

She first regained consciousness when her boyfriend Roger Jones was flown over to Miami. Medical staff advised him to shout in her ear and after several hours of bellowing he got through to her.

Initially she could remember nothing of her holiday or of the attack and could say little apart from her own name.

Ms Jones, formerly of Winchester Road, took advantage of a last-minute standby ticket to fly to Florida for a two-week holiday. Seibert attacked her as she was about to take a day-trip to Key West, the southern-most tip of the United States.

Court records revealed that when arrested for Karolay Adrianza's killing four years ago, Seibert told police: "My parents are really going to be upset at me. This is the second time I've been in trouble."

Seibert, 34, is charged with first-degree murder for the killing of Adrianza, who had attended a party at his Miami Beach apartment on March 16, 1998.

According to court documents, Seibert's flatmate William "Ace" Greene called police at 10am the following morning to say he had been shut out of the apartment and feared Seibert may be about to commit suicide inside. He claimed to have heard Seibert shout: "I'm losing it, I'm going to kill myself."

Police later forced their way into the property and detained him after finding Ms Adrianza's butchered body in the bath.

Seibert, a former restauarant dishwasher, had been using cocaine and heroin that night, court documents revealed.

Greene's testimony was videotaped earlier this year through a satellite link-up between a Miami courtroom and a prison in Ecuador, where he is serving time for drugs offences.

Prosecutor Flora Seff wants Seibert sent to the death chamber when he is sentenced next year.

Seibert has always publicly denied the attempted murder of Kathryn Jones, but was linked by forensic evidence and later bragged about the incident to fellow inmates while being held in custody.

People in Florida were so horrified by her ordeal that they set up a fund for her which, along with contributions from colleagues and former patients in Southampton, raised more than £16,500.

Since Seibert's early release in 1997, US law has been changed to ensure that violent criminals serve at least 85 per cent of their sentences.