Man, 55, pays $200,000 to kill wife, 23

May 30, 2010 News

---

– hitman confesses, money recovered
By Michael Jordan

Police appear to have solved the brutal murder of 23-year-old hairdresser Bibi Rafeena Saymar, called ‘Amanda’, who was butchered in her Hague, West Coast Demerara apartment early yesterday morning.
They have reportedly uncovered a diabolical scheme involving a wealthy and obsessive businessman, a killer he hired on the cheap, and a taxi driver who transported the alleged murderer to and from the crime scene.
Police sources said, yesterday, that they have detained a 22-year-old labourer who confessed to stabbing the pretty hairdresser 11 times in her hallway, after being offered some $200,000 to do so.
The man, who is from Holmes Street, Georgetown, reportedly identified Saymar’s 55-year-old reputed husband as the individual who approached him to carry out the deed.
The alleged hit-man also identified a taxi driver from Zeeburg, West Coast Demerara as his accomplice.
Kaieteur News understands that police nabbed the two men near the Demerara Harbour Bridge, after listening in on a telephone conversation between the alleged mastermind, whom they had detained, and the men he had allegedly hired.

Police sources said that the taxi driver was nabbed with $200,000, which he was to have handed over to the labourer. Investigators have also impounded the man’s taxi.
A source said that Saymar’s spouse, who is a wealthy businessman, has denied that he plotted her murder.  But relatives of the pretty hairdresser are convinced that she was the victim of a murder plot that was hatched by a jealous spouse.
They described her relationship as an abusive one and claimed that Saymar had complained that her reputed husband constantly threatened to kill her.
Rafeena Saymar was found mutilated and dying around 02:00 hrs yesterday in the two-bedroom flat in which she and her reputed husband lived at Hague.
Before she died she managed to give a description of her attacker.
Kaieteur News was told that the labourer told police that a taxi driver took him from Georgetown to the location at Hague where the victim lived.
He then sneaked into the young woman’s flat through a bedroom that she habitually left open at night.
He reportedly then dragged her from the bedroom and stabbed her in the hallway. The killer allegedly then left the area in the same taxi that had brought him there.
Kaieteur News understands that around 02:00 hrs yesterday a neighbour heard screams of ‘rape’ ‘help’ and ‘murder’, coming from Saymar’s flat.
The neighbour reportedly then saw a dreadlocked man leaving the premises, which is above a beer garden.
Kaieteur News was told that some of the residents and a caretaker entered the flat, where they found Saymar lying in the hallway bleeding from multiple stab wounds.
A resident said that Saymar’s spouse arrived some 15 minutes later and was informed that “something had happened” to his spouse.
He reportedly reversed his vehicle before entering the premises.
According to a source, the badly injured woman identified her attacker by ancestry before breathing her last.
A police release said that subsequent investigations led to the arrest of Saymar’s reputed husband and the suspects who are in police custody assisting with the investigations.
Rafeena’s parents received the tragic news around 04:00 hrs yesterday when police ranks arrived at their Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo home.
“They call and ask if my daughter name Amanda and if her husband named Dennis. Then they say she get murdered,” Sonita Saymar, the victim’s mother, recalled.
The couple then went to the West Demerara Regional Hospital mortuary, where they saw their daughter’s mutilated body.
Police handed them two diamond rings and a gold ring that their slain daughter was wearing when she was attacked.
The woman and other relatives are convinced that Rafeena’s murder stemmed from what they described as an abusive relationship, which began some two years ago.
They said that the 55-year-old man often travelled to Canada, and was obsessive over his attractive partner.
According to the mother, Rafeena had confided that her spouse, who owns a licensed firearm, had threatened to “blow her head open.”
The couple’s neighbours also confirmed that Rafeena and her reputed husband quarreled constantly.
The victim’s mother said that the most recent altercation occurred last Tuesday and Rafeena had locked her spouse out of the flat. However, none of these incidents were reported to the police.
Asked to explain why Rafeena had not severed the relationship, the mother said that her daughter feared that her spouse would harm her parents if she walked out on him.

---

---