Will new forensic lab help cops solve old murders?

Apr 11, 2011 News

Part One

By Michael Jordan

It’s with good reason that forensic pathologist Dr. Edward Simon gets peeved when you remind him of the murder of Felicity Holder.
The 11-year-old schoolgirl’s body was found in the bathroom of her great-aunt and her reputed husband in 1997. At first glance, it appeared that the child had hanged herself with a towel, which she had first tied to a rack in the bathroom.
But the autopsy Dr. Simon performed revealed that someone had raped and strangled Felicity. That person had then tried to cover up the actual cause of death.
Suspicion fell on Oscar Lamazon, the reputed husband of the child’s great aunt. He was charged, sentenced to death, but then freed in 20, 2004 by Justice Jainarayan Singh. In the judge’s opinion, the prosecution had failed to produce an iota of evidence to show that he had killed Felicity.
To crown it all, although sperm samples had been taken during the investigation, the defence had presented no forensic evidence to show that the accused had sex with the victim.
Now, during the autopsy, Dr. Simon had taken samples from the slain girl’s vagina and from under her fingernails.
He hoped that the samples, once tested overseas, would reveal the DNA of Felicity’s killer.
But according to Dr. Simon, he had sealed the forensic samples and turned them over to the police.
The intention was that the specimens would be sent for DNA testing in Dade County Forensic Laboratory in Miami, Florida.
But, when time passed and he received no feedback from the police about DNA results, Dr, Simon decided to check with the police.
To his consternation, he was told that the samples had never left Guyana after all.
“Some senior police official said that ‘Guyana poor and we don’t have the money to waste on that type of thing,” he said.
“No specimens were sent to any laboratory, so we could not have the DNA evidence to present in court.
“Through DNA testing, we would have been able to say who killed her (Felicity Holder).
“Those samples would have shown if the man had sex with her, and he could not have doubted it.”
The Felicity Holder case is just one of many that local investigators have lost either because of their reluctance to utilise forensic evidence or because of the absence of a proper forensic laboratory here.

Sheema Mangar

The government’s plans to set up a sophisticated, $450M forensic laboratory at the University of Guyana within a year have been greeted with enthusiasm.
One senior attorney-at-law says that for years, he had been asking that police utilise more forensic evidence and depend less on confession statements.
He believes that with the laboratory, the prosecution of matters will improve, and forensic evidence will “reduce significantly”, the number of people being wrongly committed to stand trial.
Responding to a question from a journalist, Police Commissioner Henry Greene said that the lab should help in the solving of “hot and cold” cases.
And the list of cold cases is long and goes back to decades- old matters.
In 1974, Ann Stewart, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, was found dead in an alleyway in Tucville. She had been sexually assaulted and her neck was broken. The killer had also bitten Ann on the cheek.
A young Tucville resident, who lived near to the alleyway, was the prime suspect. Although he was detained and questioned, the schoolgirl’s killer was never found.
In 1994, 13-year-old Beatrice Bobb, who had lived in a tiny shack in the city, was gang-raped and strangled on the playfield of the North Ruimveldt Multilateral School. A plastic bag was stuffed down her throat.
Two young men were questioned but no one was ever charged.
On Good Friday night in 1993, the battered body of 19-year-old female security guard Monica Reece was thrown out of a pickup on Main Street.
Forensic samples were taken from Reece’s body, as well as from the pickups of various suspects. Despite these efforts, Reece’s killer was never positively identified.
There are also ‘cold cases’ of a more recent era.
On May 16, 2008, the bound body of businessman Ganga Persaud was found in the trunk of his car in Diamond Housing Scheme. A woman remains the prime suspect but the case remains unsolved.

Ganga Persaud

On January 10, 2010, 22-year-old trainee teacher Luciana Bhagwandin was stabbed several times and her body dumped near Back Street, Harlem, West Coast Demerara.
Her killer, who remains at large, is believed to be a man who identified himself to Luciana as Jerry Jagroop.
A police official told Kaieteur News that they may have some forensic evidence, such as the victim’s clothing with gunpowder residue, from as far back as “the late eighties.” According to the official, some samples from the Monica Reece are still there.
The official was unable to say whether evidence from earlier cases are still intact.
But according to the official, many body samples were spoilt some five years ago when a freezer at the police forensic laboratory malfunctioned.
“We had a problem with the freezer and what we had was spoiled.” According to the official, investigators managed to preserve other samples by taking them to the GPHC.
But even when forensic evidence is taken, local lawmen have had some trouble getting the results from their overseas counterparts.
For example, forensic samples were taken in 2009 from the remains of Minister of Agriculture Satyadeow Sawh murder accused David Leander, called ‘Buiscuit’,
The remand prisoner, who was the last surviving accused, fell into a coma and died at the Georgetown Hospital.
Crime Chief Seelall Persaud had told the media that toxicology samples from Leander’s remains were sent to Trinidad and that the Force was awaiting the results. Police have said nothing more on the matter.
The same appears to be the case with bank employee Sheema Mangar, who died on September 11, 2010, a day after being run over by a car into which a thief had fled after snatching her phone.
Police have sent samples from the slain woman’s clothing, as well as forensic evidence overseas.
Mangar’s relatives were told by a senior police official that the samples were sent to Barbados and would be returned by January, 2011.
Last Friday, Commissioner of Police Henry Greene says that he has no idea when those forensic samples will be returned from Barbados.