The girl in the pleated pink skirt

Jun 24, 2012 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

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He was a former friend of mine. He may also have killed a young girl over 30 years ago. And I might have known for sure—maybe even have helped put him away, if I had kept my ears open.
You see, as a boy, my dream was not to be a crime reporter but an investigator of crime. I read magazines like True Detective. I learned the various fingerprints. I got my hands on old books about famous pathologists and their cases.
Back then, I was living at my parents’ home in Latchmansingh Street, Tucville. Back then, we had a tennis table and a sort of club, and boys from all the neighbouring communities would gang up at our home for a game.
One of the occasional visitors was a stocky, affable youth whom we all called ‘Fat Man.’ He was in his mid-twenties and also lived in South Tucville, in close proximity to a pretty, 14-year-old girl named Ann Stewart.
At that time I didn’t know her name. I just knew that occasionally I would see this tallish girl who always seemed to be smiling, and who was always dressed in neatly pleated pink uniforms when I went to follow my little sister to catch her bus to school.
Then on Thursday, December 8, 1976, all that changed.
At around 7:30 A.M., Ann caught an East La Penitence bus that took her to Alleyne’s High School in Regent Street.
She returned to her parents’ South Tucville home at around 3.30 P.M, and, dressed now in white blouse and matching mini-skirt, headed for basketball practice at the Parade Ground in preparation for a league competition.
Ann was a member of the Bristol Celtics and her basketball sessions usually ended late in the evening.
This had caused her mother, Stella Knights, some concern, but Mrs. Knights had eventually consented to allowing Ann to have her way, after friends and relatives persuaded her that she was being over-protective.
Ann’s neighbours usually knew when she was passing by the sound of her bouncing her basketball on the roadway.
But when 9 P.M. came and Ann had still not arrived home, her parents began to suspect that something was amiss.
After checking at relatives and friends, the parents went to the Ruimveldt Police Station to report her missing. They also visited the Georgetown Hospital to see if she had been admitted there.
The teen was still missing next day when, at around 8.00 A.M., Stella Knights, on her way to the police station, spotted a crowd of schoolchildren standing near an alleyway about 100 yards from her home.
She was so consumed by her own troubles that she thought nothing of it. But when she was returning from the station, the children were still there. This time, she went to look and saw something that made her faint.
In the alleyway, propped up against a fence, was her daughter Ann. She was fully dressed, except for her underwear, which lay about three feet away. She was still wearing a pair of gold earrings and a ring.
Ann Stewart had died violently.
Someone had bitten her just below the left eye. There were bruises on the left side of her chin. A postmortem would later reveal that someone had broken her neck.
The story of Ann’s murder, written by a reporter named Albert Alstrom, was on the front page of the evening paper called The Citizen. It was accompanied by the photograph that still sticks in my memory; that aroused no outrage back then, as it would have now. There was the dead Ann Stewart in the alleyway, with her head tilted at a strange angle.
From the boys who gathered under our house to play table tennis, I heard rumours that Ann had been walking with her boyfriend , who also lived in Tucville, when a gang of youths attacked them. The boyfriend reportedly fled, leaving Ann to the mercy of the young men.
A few days later, detectives rounded up several young men from Tucville and the neighbouring communities of Stevedore Housing Scheme, Meadowbrook and Festival City. One of the prime suspects was ‘Fat Man’, the guy who sometimes played table tennis at my home.
I learnt that the police believed that ‘Fat man’ had killed Ann Stewart. The word back then was that he had broken her neck with a karate chop. Adding to the sense of tragedy were rumours that Ann’s stepfather, a joiner, had made her casket.
‘Fat Man’ was never charged, but he never again played table tennis with us. Overnight, it seemed, he became a sullen young man. I would occasionally see him sitting alone, with a scowl on his face, on the bridge separating Tucville and South Ruimveldt.
I never spoke to him. In fact, I hardly spoke of the case. I believe that part of me was in denial that it had happened. So here I was, this youth who sometimes fantasized about being a detective, surrounded by friends who seemed to know so much about how Ann Stewart had died. Later on, I even worked at the same place with Ann Stewart’s boyfriend. But yet, I never asked him if he knew who had killed his girlfriend.
Time passed, we all grew up; but the case continued to haunt me. Years later, I became a crime reporter, and I again turned my attention to the Ann Stewart murder.  I began by enquiring about her parents, only to learn that they had migrated.
And it seemed that most of the Tucville residents who had information about the murder had either dead or were living overseas.
I was surprised to discover that the few who remembered were still apprehensive about speaking about the case, since Ann’s killed had never been caught. One old resident even cautioned me about awakening a ‘sleeping murder.’
Fortunately, I managed to contact two of Ann’s relatives. They managed to fill me in on her movements on the day she was slain.
I also re-read the story that I had seen so many years ago in en evening paper called The Citizen.
The photograph of Ann propped up in the alleyway was not as large as I had imagined it to be back then. Yet, as before, that picture with the dead girl in the alleyway caused my stomach to churn.
I also tracked down Ann’s coach. He told me that on the day of Ann’s death, she had turned up at the Parade Ground, but then complained of having a sprained ankle. He recalled that she then walked off the ground and left in the company of a young man who was waiting for her.
One of the detectives who had worked on the case said that the boyfriend admitted leaving the ground with Ann.
But he said she was still alive when they parted company. The detective also explained why they had zeroed in on ‘Fat Man’ as the prime suspect.
At the time, ‘Fat Man’ had lived a few houses away from Ann. The alleyway where the body was found was behind his home. ‘Fat Man’ also practised karate and judo, skills that the police felt made him capable of snapping Ann’s neck.
They found out that Ann’s death coincided with the suspect’s birthday. He had been drinking heavily on the night that Ann went missing.
Police believe that on the night of December 9, 1976, Ann Stewart was passing ‘Fat Man’s’ house when he either lured or forcibly carried her into his yard.
They believe that she was taken upstairs, sexually assaulted, slain and dumped in the alleyway.
They also believe that the teen was killed during a struggle or because she knew her assailant.
“We have always believed that the act was committed by the suspect and others,” the detective told me.
“However, no one confessed to the murder. No eyewitness came forward with information about the crime.    People in the area were reluctant to talk to the police and nothing f evidential value was ever found.”
While the clothing of the suspects was checked for bloodstains and their bodies examined for scratches and other recent injuries, no checks were made for fibres and other forensic evidence from Ann Stewart’s garments.
Finally, I mustered the courage to speak to ‘Fat Man.’ I had not spoken to him since Ann Stewart’s death. He was now a grey-haired, dreadlocked man; a virtual outcast in Tucville. After some persuasion, he gave his version of the events that had occurred so many years ago.
Yes, he had celebrated his birthday on the night of the murder. Yes, he had practiced karate and judo. Yes, back then he had a reputation of being a ‘bad man’ for ‘representing’ youths who were being bullied.
But he was not the only martial arts exponent in the community back then. And he had not killed Ann Stewart. In fact, ‘Fat Man’ claimed that had not even known Ann, although they had lived just a few houses apart.
On that fateful birthday of December 8, 1976, he had gone drinking with two friends. The ‘session’ had begun at around 3.00 P.M. in Georgetown. They had then driven in a ‘Mini-Moke’ to Tyrone’s liquor shop in Aubrey Barker Street, South Ruimveldt, where they remained until around 9.00 P.M.
The friends then parted, and ‘Fat Man’ said that he headed home, jogging all the way as was his custom when he was ‘high’. His ‘child mother’ and one-year-old daughter were at home when he arrived.
According to ‘Fat Man’, he went to work the following day, unaware that Ann’s body had been found in the alleyway behind his home.
He said that two days later, policemen came to his home and said that they wanted to question him about a murder. He was taken to the East La Penitence Police Station, where detectives accused him of breaking Ann Stewart’s neck.
“They said that is only somebody who know karate could do that. I keep telling them that I don’t even know the girl, but they keep telling me that I kill her. They also said that the boyfriend claim that he and Ann were by the National Park (on the night of the murder) and that they saw a ‘fat man’ riding behind them. The boyfriend claimed that he ran way.”
According to him, the detectives made him remove his clothing and examined him for recent injuries. None were found, he said.
His clothes were examined and returned to him a few days later. The friends that he gone drinking with were able to support his alibi for the might of the murder, he said.
He was kept at the station for another 24 hours then released. He was picked up again in 1977 and held for a day. Police then told him he was free to go, and he had not been questioned since.
But by then, his old life in Tucville had been wrecked. He lost his job as a heavy-duty operator. Children pointed him out in the streets. Friends shunned him. And according to ‘Fat Man’ he continued to receive threats from Ann’s boyfriend, who occasionally returned from the US where he now resided.
‘Fat Man’ said that he is as eager as everyone else to have the murder solved. “Nothing don’t hide,” he said. “Time will tell.”
I’m not so sure. There remains that niggling, depressing feeling that 36 years is way too long, and now I will never, ever know who killed the girl in the pink pleated dress.
If you have any information about this or any other unusual case, please contact Kaieteur News by letter or telephone at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown offices. Our numbers are 22-58465, 22-58473 and 22-58491. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address [email protected].

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