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Killer led cops to severed head

Published:Saturday | November 16, 2019 | 12:25 AMLivern Barrett/Senior Staff Reporter

The police investigator who led the probe into the beheading of two St Catherine women in 2011 has testified that cops were led to one of the severed heads by one of the men who confessed to being involved in the killing.

The witness, a detective inspector, was giving evidence yesterday in the murder trial of Sanja Ducally and Kemar Riley, who are accused of killing Charmaine Cover-Rattray, 40, and her 18-year-old daughter, Joeith Lynch, inside their Lauriston, St Catherine, home on July 20, 2011. Both women were decapitated.

Three men – Adrian Campbell, Fabian Smith and Roshane Goldson – have already pleaded guilty to non-capital murder for their roles in the grisly killings that sparked national outrage.

The police investigator, whose name cannot be published because of a court order, revealed that on July 29, 2011, following a conversation with detectives, Campbell led cops to premises at Rio Cobre Drive, also in Lauriston.

DNA COMPARISON

“He pointed us to an area, and from this area I would have retrieved a skull,” he said, adding that a DNA comparison later revealed that it was Lynch.

The witness testified that he saw a pathologist remove a single bullet from the skull. “About seven feet from the skull, I saw human hair.”

On Thursday, another witness testified that Riley admitted, during a jailhouse conversation, that he shot Lynch because “she did a bawl out too much”.

“Him say him did haffi move Wormy out the way and shoot her because she did a bawl out too much. He said same time Adrian dem programme the mother round the next room,” the witness recounted, using the street slang for murder.

Cover-Rattray’s head was found in the Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town Hospital, “a few days” after she was killed.

The police investigator gave evidence, too, that when he first met Ducally at the Grants Pen Police Station in St Andrew on August 30, 2011, he had an uncovered scar that ran from one side of his left wrist to the other.

Prosecutors Paula Llewellyn and Hodine Williams have already tendered into evidence a videotaped caution statement Ducally gave the police.

In the recording, which was played in court, Ducally – an assistant teacher at St Catherine Primary School at the time – acknowledged that he was standing next to Goldson as the convicted killer chopped Lynch.

“While he was chopping, he swung the cutlass and it chopped me on my hand,” he said in the recording done at the Grants Pen Police Station.

The police investigator admitted, during cross-examination, that Ducally told him he did not kill Lynch.

“Did you ask him (Ducally) how he came by the scar on his hand?” asked attorney-at-law Anthony Williams, who is representing Ducally.

“He said he was walking past the house when he heard Crystal scream for help and ran inside to assist when Roshane chop him on his hand,” the police investigator replied, using Lynch’s pet name.

“Did he not say to you that he was trying to save Crystal when Roshane chopped him?” Williams pressed.

“He did say that to me,” the witness replied.

The trial continues on Monday.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com