The race to find Nikki’s killer

Apr 27, 2014 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

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– how a 21-year-old unsolved case changed the face of crime reporting in Guyana

By Michael Jordan

Some of the old-timers would dispute this, but the truth is, the veteran journalists of the typewriter and early computer era never covered the crime beat with the intensity that we do today. If you doubt this, just check the archives.

A serial killer named Harrynauth Beharry murdered seven children in the late sixties and there was nary a photo of those children in the papers that existed at the time. Both the Mirror and the Guyana Graphic had only blurred figures of the killer on his way to court when they finally caught him. Can you imagine something like that happening today?
But ‘Nikki’ changed all that 21 years ago. Most of us know her as Monica Reece.
I was a freelancer at the Chronicle back then on Good Friday, April 9, 1993, when police informed the media that someone had killed a 20-year-old female security guard named Monica Reece, and had thrown her body out of a pickup on Main Street.
None of those dailies seemed to think much of the incident. The Stabroek News carried a small press release on their back page. The Chronicle, I think, carried a similar story on its inside pages.  But no one had bothered to interview the slain girl’s family or collect a picture of her.
To me, though, there was something sickening about this body-dumping story and I was somewhat surprised at the offhand way that it was being treated in the media.
I decided to try to find out more by setting out on a very long walk around Georgetown.
First, I went to the Brickdam Police Station, where a detective told me that they had a description of the pickup from which Reece was thrown.  I then went to Main Street where the guys who sell sculptures and other craft hung out. One of the chaps claimed that he was around when the 4×4 vehicle passed. Then he gave me what he said was a partial number of the vehicle from which Reece was dumped.
I also learned that a cousin of Reece’s had written down the telephone number of a man who had called her on Good Friday.
I then walked to CID Headquarters, Eve Leary. A Homicide Division rank informed me that they had a suspect in custody and I spotted a dark-coloured pickup in the compound. I jotted the number down and returned to the Chronicle. I told Chief Photographer Mike Norville what I had. “Why you don’t try the Licence and Revenue Office?” he said.
I called, giving them the number of the vehicle in the CID compound. A male staffer readily gave me the name of the vehicle owner. I turned to Mike Norville, stunned.
“Is —–vehicle,” I said.
I can’t recall who told me that race driver Ray Rahaman was in Main Street on Good Friday night and had spotted the pickup. I called Mr. Rahaman, who readily confirmed this information. According to Rahaman, he hadn’t seen Reece’s body being thrown out of the vehicle, and had at first thought that she was a hit-and-run victim.
He attempted to pursue the pickup, which was heading north along the western carriageway of Main Street, but the driver managed to escape before he could catch up.
Rahaman said that he was too far behind to identify the occupant or the vehicle.
I then walked to the East Street residence where Monica Reece’s mother lived.
Shirley Reece readily supplied me with what information she had. She also gave me a photograph of a fair-complexioned girl, with a hand on one hip as she smiled into the camera.
It was the first picture that the public would see of Monica Reece.
We had all anticipated that the Reece case would have been solved within days.

As writer Barrington Braithwaite cynically stated in a letter at the time: “How many 4×4 pickups were there in the country?”
But the Reece case wasn’t solved, as I had anticipated, and the wealthy suspect was released.
The publishing of my story, and a letter praising the Chronicle woke the Stabroek News up to the fact that the Monica Reece murder was a major story. They hurried to ‘catch up.’ From what I was told, an editorial meeting was held and a sort of team was put together to follow the case.
From then, it was a race between the two dailies to bring out the next ‘scoop’ about Monica Reece.
Headlines like: “Reece was dead before dumping…” and ‘Reece had sex shortly before death’ became the daily fare. The Stabroek News also interviewed one of the first young men to be detained. I also remember the first press conference on the case, when Police Commissioner Laurie Lewis said emphatically: “WE WILL SOLVE THIS CRIME!”
One of the more lurid headlines stated that Reece’s murder was linked to the discovery of a cocaine cache on a Guyana Airways Corporation plane. Another story in the Stabroek News suggested that a Main Street vagrant known as ‘Tourist’ had been murdered because he had seen too much on that fateful Good Friday night. Back then, there was no internet, and newspaper vendors would pass and scream out the latest Monica Reece headline.
Reporters began hanging out in ‘Tiger Bay’ after hearing that the driver of the pickup had escaped into that area. At the time, Sharief Khan was the Chronicle’s Editor-in-Chief. Whatever his faults may have been, Sharief was a highly competitive and encouraging editor. He was proud that only the Chronicle had a photo of Monica Reece. I recall him being furious when Reece’s mother eventually gave the Stabroek News a copy of the same photo.
I remember going to work one day and discovering that I had been badly scooped by the Stabroek News. Monica Reece’s body had been exhumed, and samples of hair were taken from the corpse to be sent overseas. It reached a stage where I was even dreaming of Monica Reece, whom I had never seen.
The incessant reporting began to get at Commissioner Laurie Lewis, and some of his investigators said that the media were scaring off potential eyewitnesses. I recall my friend, the late Government pathologist, Dr. Leslie Mootoo, saying: ‘You are mucking up the case.’ Commissioner Lewis even called in some journalists over stories that seemed to point to Reece’s killer.
Once, I went on a talk show, produced by Paloma Mohamed, and spoke about the still-unsolved Reece affair. The following day, I was invited to the office of a senior police official, who wanted to ascertain what information I had.
I guess we were no longer depending on the police to find Reece’s killers. I guess the editors of both dailies knew that their stock would rise if they cracked the case. Even some of my colleagues at the Chronicle attempted to ‘scoop’ me and try to solve the case for themselves. Two female reporters, including one on the sports beat, got wind that Reece may have once hung out in a squatting area in Georgetown. They tried to track down ‘Nikki’s’ friends. They got nowhere.
But something disturbing was emerging about this whole affair. The names of at least four ‘high society’ individuals were repeatedly emerging as suspects. These individuals reportedly hung out together, and also owned pickups. One young man’s father was a senior government official.
It became clear that some media personnel had their ‘favourite’ suspect among the group, but became unhappy and defensive when fingers were pointed at other individuals in the group. Race, class and politics seemed to play a part in this preference.
I eventually learned that investigators identified a prime suspect among those four individuals.
One senior police officer actually told me that “Reece’s murder is a solved crime.”
Speaking disparagingly about ‘Nikki’, that official suggested that Reece died while threatening to expose her relationship with the individual, who was reportedly involved with another woman.
While Commissioner Lewis accused the media of poor coverage, some of his ranks were highly critical of the Commissioner, and even questioned his handling of the investigation.
One senior police official recalled that Commissioner Lewis would grill his team daily for fresh information about the investigation. Why, the source wondered, was the Commissioner so interested in this particular matter?
Even today, some of my colleagues come up to me and say: “Jordan, is who kill Monica Reece?’
After all these years, I honestly don’t know. All I know is that Nikki’s murder brought in a new era of crime journalism. I am proud to have been part of this.
If you have any information about any other unusual case, please contact Kaieteur News at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown location. We can be reached on telephone numbers 225-8458, 225-8465, 225-8491 or 225-8473. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address: [email protected]

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