Contract killer handed cops secret recordings of convos

The Portland fisherman who said he was contracted by Everton ‘Beachy Stout’ McDonald to murder his wife, disclosed yesterday that he gave the police about 120 secretly recorded conversations between himself and the businessman.

The murder convict, 58, who is serving a 19-year prison sentence for his role in the murder, testified yesterday that he gave the police the phone with the recordings on August 2, 2020, when they swooped down on his house during a 5:00 a.m. raid, armed with a search warrant.

Denvaly ‘Bubbla’ Minott told the Home Circuit Court, where McDonald, 68, and St Mary tiler Oscar Barner, 33, are on trial for murder, that he started making the recordings when he went to visit the businessman at his office after his wife’s murder on July 2, 2020.

“Mi an’ him have a dispute in the office,” Minott shared. However, he did not say what the reason was for the dispute.

According to the witness, during the search, the police seized a bag that he had with receipts as well as US$650,000 in counterfeit bills.

Minott said that he and his son were taken into custody and transported to Kingston, and eventually, he was charged with murder.

While being questioned, he said, “I told them that all information that they want I will give it to them.”

PHONE EVIDENCE

Recalling further, he said he told the investigators that he also had a phone with information on it that they could use.

The witness testified that he downloaded a call-recording application and changed the setting so that the conversations could be recorded.

He also told the court that he changed the name of the recording to Vybz Kartel so that persons would think that they were actually songs.

Asked if had seen or heard the recordings since turning them over to the police, he said the phone was taken to him in 2020 while he was in custody at Port Royal Police Station, and he unlocked the phone and replayed them.

The partially burned body of McDonald’s wife, Tonia, was found with her throat slashed in her car, which had been set ablaze along a deserted road in Sherwood Forest in Portland.

The 32-year-old businesswoman was stabbed 10 times in the upper body, according to the post-mortem report.

Minott, who said he was offered $3 million but subcontracted the hit to Barnes, testified on Tuesday that he lured the woman to her death under the guise that she was going to collect a gun that she was seeking to buy.

The trial previously heard that the woman had asked Minott to purchase a gun for her to avenge her father’s death. However, Minott claimed that McDonald told him that he was responsible for the man’s death.

Minott testified that when he enquired about the payment after Tonia’s death, McDonald told him, “You think a suh $3 million easy fi work?”

Sometime after, he said the businessman assured him that he would be paid but asked him to “hold on”. However he disclosed yesterday that he was never paid.

In the meantime, persons inside the courtroom, including the seven-member jury, were left stunned earlier in the proceedings after the witness testified that he and Tonia were involved in a sexual relationship at the time of her death.

“I was a part of her life. I used to have sex with her,” he said in explanation after earlier stating, “She used to give him trouble wid me, ma’am.”

Minott said the relationship started on June 2, 2020, and was still going on up to the time of her death.

The married man, who previously testified that he had watched as Barnes stabbed Tonia repeatedly, made the jaw-dropping revelation after the prosecutor questioned him about the nature of their relationship.

The defence, in the meantime, is to start cross-examining Minott today when the trial is resumed before Justice Chester Stamp.

Attorneys-at-law Earl Hamilton, Christopher Townsend, John Jacobs, and Courtney Rowe are representing McDonald while Ernest Davies is representing Barnes, who is on bail.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com