“Who’s calling on my dead daughter’s phone?”

Apr 10, 2016 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

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–    Is a killer playing a sadistic game with a Charlestown family?

By Michael Jordan
A rather odd thing happened at Yvette Parris’ Sussex Street home in March 2011. The phone in her home

rang, but when she picked it up no one answered at the other end. That in itself was nothing strange. What was disturbing was the fact that the call had apparently come from the mobile phone of her daughter who had been dead for close to three years…
At around 9 pm. on Monday, November 24, 2008, Mrs. Parris’ daughter, 26-year-old Creavone Thorne, stepped out of the Lot 35 Lyng Street, Charlestown house where she had been staying with her fiancé, Orlando Spencer, and other relatives after returning from Antigua. She turned into Sussex Street, where she saw a female cousin standing on a bridge near the cousin’s home.
The cousin remembers that Creavone said that she was going “for a fine spin” and would be back. She also remembers that Creavone, who loved ‘short clothes’, was wearing a red vest and a pair of short pants.
Reflecting on that brief encounter, the cousin can recall nothing to suggest that anything was amiss. In fact, she said that the woman appeared to be ‘in a good mood.’
According to her, Creavone then headed further down Sussex Street and disappeared from sight.
The woman had reportedly told her younger sister that she would return by midnight, but when the sister attempted to contact her by mobile phone, she received no answer.
When Tuesday came and Creavone had still not turned up, her mother went over to her daughter’s Lyng Street residence to see her fiancé.
According to relatives, the fiancé said he had no idea about Creavone’s whereabouts, and claimed that he had assumed that she was by her mother’s. He did not appear to be worried that the mother also had no idea where his fiancée was.
Tuesday passed, and still there was no sign of Creavone, and relatives were now becoming worried.  On Wednesday, November 26, 2008, relatives began contacting everyone that the missing woman knew for information about her whereabouts. That very morning, at around seven o’clock, a man who was grazing his cows in Thomas Lands near the National Park spotted something floating in a trench. That ‘something’ was in fact a woman’s bloated, half-naked body.

By the time Creavone Thorne’s relatives got the news, police had already taken the unidentified body taken to the Lyken Funeral Parlour. The woman’s fiancé and two other relatives went to the funeral parlour, where they immediately confirmed that the victim was indeed Creavone Thorne.

The victim’s gold chain, gold earrings, gold anklet and Motorola Razr phone were missing. An autopsy would reveal that she had been manually strangled. There was also a wound at the back of the victim’s head.
Shortly after the body was identified, police took Creavone’s fiancé into custody. They found nothing to link him to her murder and released him three days later.
STALKED
Creavone Thorne had been living in Antigua and had only returned to Guyana for about six weeks. While she had never complained of being threatened, a cousin identified a man whom she said literally stalked the tall, attractive woman.
According to the cousin, the man would call Creavone repeatedly on her mobile phone to enquire of her whereabouts.
“The Sunday night (a day before she disappeared), she came around the corner (to Sussex Street) and the minute she came around the corner he was calling her. He called often; he was her stalker. She said that she couldn’t speak on her phone (in private) because he was always watching her.”
Family members have alleged that on the night Creavone disappeared, persons saw the suspect riding a bicycle that he had borrowed from a friend, and the bicycle was reportedly found with grass and mud on it. He was reportedly seen riding the same bicycle during the early hours of Monday November 24, 2008, before the body was found.
A coconut vendor would later tell the cousin that he saw Creavone enter a taxi near Regent and King Streets on the night that she was murdered. The vendor reportedly saw the taxi driver some time later and informed him that the woman he had picked up had been murdered. The driver reportedly claimed that he had dropped Creavone near Howes Street, Charlestown.
Two years passed with no new leads. Then, in March 2011, Mrs. Parris’ phone rang. The woman thought nothing of it when no one answered, until she saw the familiar number.
Someone was using her murdered daughter’s mobile phone.
The mystery caller telephoned Mrs. Parris again a few days later, and according to relatives, still continues to contact the family, but never speaks. The person also sent a text message which read: “Who is this?”
“The person is not saying anything, not even ‘hello’, and when we try calling back the phone is sometimes on, and off at other times,” a cousin said.
“It makes me believe that the person is not a stranger to us.”
Creavone’s mother says that she had informed a senior police official and others from the Home Affairs Ministry about this development, but is far from satisfied with the responses she has received.
“I go to Home Affairs hoping for a feedback; I go to (name of senior police official) and he say I must find the taxi driver (who allegedly picked up Creavone).”
The relatives are convinced that the mystery caller is also Creavone’s killer. They believe that it’s the same individual who had appeared to be obsessed with her. Mrs. Parris says that she occasionally sees the man. When this happens, she would plead with him to confess.
“I ask him plenty times (if he is the killer) and he would tell me is not he.”
The man now tries to avoid her.

Update: Last month, violent death came once again to the family, when Mrs. Parris’s son, Army Lance Corporal Kevon Payne, was gunned down outside her Sussex Street, Charlestown home.

If you have any information about these or any other unusual cases, please contact Kaieteur News by letter or telephone at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown office. Our numbers are 22-58465, 22-58458 and 22-58452. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address: [email protected]

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