Chief sleuth denies wilfully withholding clandestine phone recordings

The lead investigator in the Tonia McDonald murder case yesterday denied that he had deliberately hidden information from the defence about the existence of a cellular phone which allegedly contained secretly recorded conversations between Everton 'Beachy Stout' McDonald and the man whom he had allegedly hired to kill his wife.

At the same time, the investigator disclosed that there is no record of the existence of the phone in any station diary or in any registry at the Major Investigations Division (MID), which was the branch that had investigated the murder.

The senior policeman, a detective sergeant, further admitted that he first made mention of the phone in a third statement, which he had submitted after the trial had started.

McDonald and his co-defendant, Oscar Barnes, the alleged hitman, are currently on trial in the Home Circuit Court in connection to the August 20, 2020 murder of the Portland businesswoman.

Denavlyn Minott, the owner of the phone in question, a Samsung Galaxy A 31, had testified that McDonald hired him to murder his wife for $3 million but that he subcontracted the hit to Barnes.

The prosecution witness, who pleaded guilty to murder shortly after Tonia's killing, is currently serving a 19-year sentence and will be eligible for parole after serving 10 years.

Yesterday, when the trial resumed, defence lawyers grilled the investigating officer at length about the phone’s existence and why there are no records of the phone's existence in any of the official police records except for his notebook and why it had taken him three years to share the information with the defence.

Under cross-examination from attorney-at-law John Jacobs, the witness, who at times appeared to be fumbling in his responses, said after collecting the phone he turned it over to the storekeeper at MID but later returned and took it to the Communication Forensic and Cybercrimes Division (CFCD), where he was given a receipt, which he said he did not have at the moment. But later, when pressed by defence attorney Christopher Townsend, he conceded that he was unsure of the receipt's whereabouts. This was after he indicated that the receipt was on the case file or at MID’s office.

The investigator, who had previously insisted that he had taken the phone to CFCD on August 4, 2020, admitted that he made an error and that the correct date was August 3, after looking at his statement.

He was then questioned about a reference number he had written in his third statement about the phone. During the exchange, he agreed that he made no mention of the actual receipt number that he was given for the phone in the statement by CFCD.

However, according to him, the number that he wrote was also a reference number used for exhibits in the case.

At the same time, he told the court that the receipt number was a unique number assigned to the phone.

Further in Jacobs’s cross-examination, the witness denied that a password was created for the phone after it was seized.

Asked if he wasn’t the one who had created the password, he said, “I have never created a password for any phone not even my own."

Pressed further on whether the phone had been tampered with the creation of a password he said he did not know.

The witness maintained that Minott had used a thumbprint to open the phone when he took the phone to him while in custody.

The witness was also asked the reason why there was no record of the phone or other potential exhibits and explained that a decision was taken by the team not to have any records to preserve the integrity of the exhibits based on a risk assessment.

He said the safety of the officers involved in the case and to control of the information were also factors.

Jacobs then suggested that he made no record of the phone because it did not exist but the witness disagreed.

He was further asked why he never asked Minott about the phone in any of the 125 questions asked during the four-hour long question-and-answer session but claimed he could not recall if that was the case. However, after being shown the document confirmed that he never asked about the phone although he had information. He later admitted too that he did not enquire about the SD card or the recording.

But, he admitted to Townsend that the phone was an important issue in the case. The detective was also asked whether the prosecution would have been derelict in its duty by not disclosing the information about the phone and acknowledged that the prosecution had a duty to divulge the information.

The officer at that point admitted that although the prosecution had that duty, he did not put the information in any of his first two statements, or the Q& A, or had any record in the storekeeper's or exhibit registry. Also, he admitted that none of the MID officers mentioned the phone in their statements.

But he answered that he was being deliberate by only recording the information about the phone in the notebook, which he controlled. However, he indicated that he did not make a deliberate attempt to hide the information from the defence. In the same vein, he said that would not have been fair to the defence.

Townsend, later in his cross-examination, called the lead investigator a liar after he first denied labelling the phone when it was handed over to him but soon after admitted that he had in fact labelled the phone.

However, Justice Chester Stamp reprimanded Townsend for accusing the witness of lying in such a strident and emphatic manner and he quickly apologised.

The trial will continue tomorrow with a new witness.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com