Attorneys to seek dismissal of murder charges in Collymore case today
Published:Wednesday | April 24, 2024 | 12:13 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
Defence lawyers in the Omar Collymore murder trial will today make their cases for the court to dismiss the murder and murder conspiracy charges against the four men implicated in businesswoman Simone Campbell Collymore’s murder, including her husband.
The lawyers will start their no-case submissions in the Home Circuit Court following Tuesday’s completion of the prosecution’s case. Presiding judge Justice Leighton Pusey is expected to rule on Thursday.
Collymore, a 41-year-old Barbados-born businessman, and his coaccused – alleged contract killer Michael Adams, Dwayne Pink and Shaquilla Edwards – are each charged with two counts of murder and conspiracy to murder.
The quartet was implicated in the brazen daylight contract killing of 32-year-old Campbell-Collymore and taxi driver Winston ‘Corey’ Walters, 36, on January 2, 2018. The victims were killed when men rode up on motorbikes and sprayed them with bullets as they waited to be let inside Campbell-Collymore’s Forest Ridge apartment complex in Red Hills, St Andrew.
Collymore is alleged to have masterminded the plot.
The trial has so far heard that Collymore, a US citizen, hired Adams to facilitate the murder of his wife and that Edwards and Pink allegedly played a role in surveilling the businesswoman’s movements before her death.
One of the triggermen in Campbell-Collymore’s murder previously testified that he was told that the hit was for $2 million.
Wade Blackwood, a confessed member of the Unruly Gang, who is currently serving two life sentences for the murders, had disclosed that he got the price tag from the other shooter, ‘Jim’, the now-deceased alleged leader of the Unruly Gang, to which they all reportedly belonged.
Blackwood also testified that Adams was the contract killer and was the one who spoke with the man who had ordered the hit on the woman.
Among the evidence presented was that Collymore was the sole beneficiary on her $21-million life insurance and was allotted 70 per cent of her second life insurance policy, worth $80 million.
The couple’s two children were the other beneficiaries of the second policy, with 15 per cent each.
LIFE INSURANCE POLICY
Campbell-Collymore had finalised an $80-million life insurance policy less than three months before she was murdered to add to the $21-million policy. Collymore also took out a life insurance policy for $80 million, with his wife and children as beneficiaries.
The trial also heard the evidence about the phone and cell site data from a forensic data analyst, a deputy superintendent of police attached to the Constabulary Force’s Communication, Forensics and Cybercrime Division, who examined the data, which he received from the island’s two main service providers.
Phone data evidence showed that there was continuous communication between Collymore and the alleged contract killer in the days leading up to his wife’s murder, and in one of the texts sent two days before her death, he was urging the person “to hurry up” and to “ do it this morning”.
The data also showed a pattern where Collymore would often call his wife, Simone Campbell-Collymore, before calling or attempting to make contact with the alleged contract killer, often within the space of a minute.
Specifically, phone data records showed that Collymore had called his wife for a minute, half an hour before she was murdered, and immediately after, he made another minute-long call to the man whom he allegedly contracted to have her killed.
The phone data records further revealed that Adams and one of the shooters, Jim, exchanged several calls on the day of the shooting. Cell site data also placed Jim close to Simone’s apartment when the calls started.