Murder accused claims malice on part of lead investigator

A St Mary labourer accused of killing the two US missionaries in 2016 has suggested that he was charged because the lead investigator had a personal grudge against him and had threatened to have him imprisoned or killed.

Twenty-two-year-old Andre Thomas was charged in June 2016 for the murders of Randy Hentzel and Harold Nichols in Wentworth, St Mary, between April 30 and May 1, 2016. Both men had gunshot wounds, while one had six chop wounds to the head.

The investigating officer, who is now a deputy superintendent of police, had testified that Thomas not only gave him information about the murder, but had directed a police team to the exact spot where the body of one of the victims was found.

Thomas also gave the investigating officer and other policemen several statements in which he named his cousin, Dwight Henry, who has already pleaded guilty to the murder, as the lone killer.

Thomas, in one of the statements, is reported to have told the police that he only helped to tie one of the men’s hands.

While proclaiming his innocence on Tuesday, Thomas, in an unsworn statement from the prisoner’s dock, told the seven-member jury that the investigator officer had always harboured animosity towards him.

“Is a police, come in like say him don’t like mi ‘cause him we see mi on the street an waa jump out pon mi in a car and lock mi up fi no reason at all.

“Him tell mi already say him must send mi a prison or him a go kill mi and mi don’t do him nothing,” the short, slim-built defendant said while leaning against the railing of the prisoner dock.

Thomas added that the officer also told the mother of his child to “dash weh the baby” and that she should not have got pregnant for him.

BRIBERY

The investigator, he claimed, also used a sex charge to bribe him into giving information about the murder.

Thomas, at the time, was in custody on a charge of having sex with a person under 16, to which he later pleaded guilty.

The court heard that the investigator told Thomas that if he provided information on the murder, he could make the sex matter “go away”.

“Mi did believe him, so mi did give him the information,” Thomas asserted, while identifying another officer, who he claimed also made him promises.

The accused killer also told the court that a now-retired deputy superintendent of police had beaten him.

The retired officer, in his testimony, said that Thomas had pulled him aside on the day when he was guiding them to the murder scene and told him that Henry killed the men. The officer had denied that Thomas was beaten.

In the meanwhile, in recounting his version of what had happened on the day the men were killed, Thomas stopped short of saying he was surprised by the fatal attack on the victims.

He claimed that his reason for travelling to the community was to assist his cousin on the farm as he usually does.

According to him, while they were cleaning up the farm, they heard a bike and Henry went to enquire.

He said that Henry then called him and when he went to where Henry was, he saw him with one of the missionaries, who he ordered off the bike at gunpoint.

Thomas said he begged Henry repeatedly to leave the man alone, but he brushed him off and called him a coward, while pointing out that he had heard about the things that the white men had done.

Thomas, who claimed he stood and watched helplessly as Henry shot and killed one of the men, said Thomas had also threatened him with the firearm.

He also told the court that after killing the first man, Henry chased the other with a gun and machete.

According to him, he had not followed Henry.

The court heard earlier that he told the police in one of his statements that he did not know how the other man died.

Before ending his nearly 20-minute-long statement, Thomas said: “Mi never tell the police say mi tie up no man hand and mi never carry dem go nuh crime scene. A police carry mi go a de crime scene.”

Both the prosecution and defence are to make final addresses today.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com