‘I didn’t want to see my husband like that’
Missionary’s widow refused to identify slain spouse’s body
Published:Wednesday | July 5, 2023 | 1:58 AMLivern Barrett/Senior Staff Reporter
American missionary Teri Nichols Hinds disclosed yesterday that she refused a request by police investigators to identify the body of her deceased husband, Harold.
Sara Hentzel, another American missionary, also turned down a request to identify the body of her deceased husband, Randy.
The bodies of Harold Nichols, 53, and Randy Hentzel, 48, both American missionaries, were found in Wentworth district, St Mary, between April 30 and May 1, 2016.
They had been missing for hours.
“The police wanted Sara and I to come and identify the bodies,” Nichols Hinds said as she gave evidence in the Home Circuit Court during the murder trial of Andre Thomas, her slain husband’s accused killer.
“Did you do so?” asked the prosecutor leading her through her evidence.
“No,” Nichols Hinds responded.
“What was the reason you did not want to identify your husband’s body?” the prosecutor pressed.
“I didn’t want to see my husband like that,” said Nichols Hinds, who, along with her slain husband, had been doing humanitarian work mainly in St Mary for 14 years.
Harold Nichols’ gruesome killing came after the couple took a trip to Colombia to celebrate 25 years of marriage, his widow testified.
Randy Hentzel was killed shortly after he returned to the island from the United States where he, his wife and five children had gone to “sort of recharge their batteries”, she said.
Nichols Hinds recounted that, on April 30, 2016 she got a call from someone who wanted to know if she knew where her late husband was.
At that point, she said, “I knew something was wrong.”
Not long after, the American missionary said she got a call from the Area Two Police, headquartered in St Mary.
She testified that the police visited her home, but “wouldn’t give us any information”.
“They just kept saying ‘we have a situation’. And that a white man was found,” Nichols Hinds testified.
She said cops showed a picture of the slain man to another US missionary she had called for support who confirmed that it was Hentzel.
“They did not know where Harold was,” she said.
Nichols Hinds testified that the following day a large number of people from the community gathered to go in search of her missing husband.
She said later that day she heard people “screaming and crying in the street”.
“And I knew that they must have found Harold.”
Humanitarian assistance
The Nichols and Hentzels were part of a team that provided a range of humanitarian assistance to between 600 and 1,000 underserved people in St Mary every week, Nichols Hinds testified.
Nichols Hinds and her late husband arrived in Jamaica in October 2002 as part of Christian Service International (CSI) missionaries before moving to Teams for Medical Missions in 2004.
Between the two groups, Nichols Hinds said she and her husband constructed small homes for indigents and the less fortunate and facilitated medical clinics and food distribution and Bible studies classes.
“They would come to our gate,” she recounted.
Another man, Dwight Henry, pleaded guilty to murder for his involvement in the killings, which made international headlines.
He was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to serve 28 years before he is eligible for parole.
The trial continues today.