BEACHY STOUT MURDER TRIAL
Phone linked to secret tapes admitted into evidence
Published:Saturday | December 16, 2023 | 12:08 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
The cellular phone used to secretly record conversations between contracted killer Denvalyn Minott and Portland businessman Everton ‘Beachy Stout’ McDonald was on Friday admitted into evidence, paving the way for the tapes to be heard.
The 48-year-old murder convict, who is serving a 19-year prison sentence, previously told the court that the businessman offered him $3 million to murder his wife, Tonia, but that he subcontracted the hit to Oscar Barnes.
Minott had also testified that he secretly recorded about 120 conversations between him and McDonald after downloading a call-recording application on the phone.
He said that he gave the police the device with the recordings on August 2, 2020, when they swooped down on his house during a 5 a.m. raid.
The said phone was identified by the lead investigator in court on Friday.
McDonald and Barnes are on trial in the Home Circuit Court for the July 2020 murder of the businessman’s second wife, Tonia.
But before the cellular phone was tendered into evidence, the lead investigator told the court that he had met with Minott, who had unlocked the phone and played one of the recordings.
The detective sergeant said he took the cellular phone to the Port Royal Police Station, where Minott was being housed.
He said that Minott unlocked the dual SIM device with his thumbprint and he (the detective) entered a code to access and retrieve the two IMEI numbers, which were read in court.
The court also heard that the detective had recorded a statement from Minott about the phone and the conversations.
Earlier this week, another investigator told the court that he seized Minott’s cellular phone on the morning of his arrest at his home in Ranch Hill, Portland.
Tonia’s partially burned body was found with her throat slashed in her car, which had been set ablaze along a deserted road in Sherwood Forest in Portland on July 20, 2020.
The postmortem found that she had been stabbed 10 times.
The detective sergeant will continue his evidence on Monday.