Latest update December 23rd, 2024 3:40 AM
57 years for insurance manager’s killer
Former hospital employee Clive Knights has been sentenced to 57 years in prison for the 2012 murder of
Clive Knights
former Insurance Executive, Bert Whyte.
The sentence was handed by Justice Navindra Singh at the High Court in Georgetown, after a mixed jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict. The judge had initially passed a sentence of 60 years, but three years were taken off for the time the accused spent in prison pending the trial.
Knights must serve thirty years behind bars before he is eligible for parole. Knights had opted to remain silent when he was given a chance to lead his defence. He remained impassive throughout yesterday’s ruling.
A caution statement admitted in the trial on Wednesday revealed that Knights had confessed to stabbing Whyte.
Knights’ statement was read aloud to the court by Detective Constable, Kester Cosbert. In the document, Knights said that he met Whyte, while they were both employed at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). According to the statement, Whyte had revealed to him that he was a homosexual and expressed a desire to be in a relationship with him. However, Knights declined the offer but decided to remain friends with the victim, since he believed that his way of life had nothing to do with him.
The statement outlined that sometime later, both men left their job at the hospital but they continued to hang out. The accused in his statement related that on the day of the incident, he went to a Main Street bar with Whyte and they had a few beers.
The accused said that he was tired, intoxicated and must have fallen asleep.
According to the statement, the accused said that he remembered going to Whyte’s car but he came to by
Bert Whyte
himself, after he felt someone’s finger at his anus. Knights said that he opened his eyes and found Whyte’s head between his legs; he was performing oral sex on him.
The accused, according to the statement, said that he had an ice pick, which he said he used to stab Whyte before driving away with his car. He had however related to investigators that he was sorry for what happened since the deceased was his friend.
Whyte, a former Assistant Company Secretary at Guyana and Trinidad Mutual Life (GTM) Insurance, was murdered on May 14, 2012.
The case was presented by State Prosecutor Judith Gildharie Mursalin. Attorney-at-law Konyo Thompson represented Whyte.
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