A little girl is missing

Mar 08, 2015 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

– does an unmarked grave in Pattensen hold her remains?

By Michael Jordan
There have been some rather unusual disappearances over the past few years. There is Michael Harris,

The suspect:
Victor Simmons

the 58-year-old Linden contractor who vanished from his home on Christmas Day in 2008, leaving his breakfast of black-cake and pepperpot on the dinner table. There is US citizen Kwame Rumel Jobronewet, who disappeared in mid-June of 2009, while visiting relatives in Buxton.
And then there is the disturbing case at Pattensen, Turkeyen, on the East Coast of Demerara, of a little girl who vanished more than eleven years ago. There is genuine fear that somewhere in that community lies an unmarked grave containing her remains.
Her name was Nordex Wilkinson. She was just eleven years old, but from all reports, her brief life was one of misery. Her mother, Nadia Wilkinson, and father, Victor Simmons, had separated after an acrimonious relationship.
The mother lived at Bartica, while Nordex and her two other sisters, Keasha, aged nine, and eight-year-old Kimberly, lived in Pattensen, Turkeyen, with their father, Victor Simmons.
Keasha would later tell detectives that they were constantly starved, beaten and even stoned on occasions.
It was in mid-May 2004, that little Keasha contacted her mother and an aunt, and told them a disturbing tale.
The child informed her relatives that she had run away from home. She alleged that a few days before fleeing the home, her father had come home while they were attempting to prepare a meal.

Missing, believed dead: Nordex Wilkinson

He had reportedly flown into a rage and began to beat them with a piece of wood. According to the child, the man had grabbed a pair of scissors and slashed Nordex’s throat.
According to Keasha, her elder sister was bedridden after the beating and Keasha was forced to take care of her.
She alleged that a few days after, she saw her father fetching the badly injured Nordex out of the house.
He reportedly arrived home later that night and told her that he had sent Nordex out of the country. The child said that the father told her to say the same thing to anyone who asked about her sister’s whereabouts.
But she also said that when some relatives visited the home and asked for Noxdex, the father would tell them that the child had returned to her mother.
Keasha said that after her sister disappeared, her father took her out of the Redeemer Primary School, which they had attended, and transferred them to a school in Sophia.
The girl and her younger sister, Kimberly, were later taken to a female relative’s home at Yarrowkabra, on the Soesdyke/Linden highway.
Eventually, on May 18, 2004, Keasha ran away. She traveled to Philadelphia, Essequibo, where she contacted an aunt.
Fearing that Nordex might have been the victim of foul play, the relatives contacted detectives at Timehri in an attempt to locate the missing child.
Detectives at Sparendaam Police Station joined in the investigation. But by now, the children’s father had also vanished. Relatives placed photographs of the child’s father in several areas in an effort to locate him, but still he remained missing.
Detectives also briefly detained a male relative of the missing man.
In June 2004, police, apparently convinced that Nordex was dead, dug up behind the family’s Pattensen, Turkeyen home, in an attempt to locate the child’s remains. They found nothing.
Eventually, the fate of the missing child faded into the background as more sensational cases took precedence.
To this date, the fate and whereabouts of Nordex and her father remain a mystery.

If you have any information about the whereabouts of Nordex Wilkinson and her father, Victor Simmions, please contact the police.
You can also contact Kaieteur News by letter or telephone at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown. Our numbers are 22-58458, 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].