THE ‘BLUE MOVIE’ MURDER

Jun 19, 2016 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

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– A fun-loving girl was strangled and dumped in an alleyway

– Was she the victim of a pornography ring?

By Michael Jordan
At six feet two inches in height, Albert Forde could easily pass for a hard-boiled cop in a movie script. But the burly, bespectacled Forde was no actor, and certainly no sleuth.
But in 1988, fate thrust the former trawler captain and minibus operator into the role of amateur detective, in pursuit of the men who murdered his daughter.
And before he migrated years ago, Forde was certain that he had finally closed in on his daughter’s killers who, he claimed, were members of a bizarre pornographic and drug ring, involved in the extortion, and possible murder of young women.

ONE-MAN CRUSADE
Forde’s one-man crusade began on Thursday, December 8, 1988, when two schoolboys stumbled on the partly decomposed body of a young woman on a dam in North East La Penitence, Greater Georgetown.
The victim was lying on her back. The pants-suit she wore was pulled down to her knees. Detectives quickly surmised that she had been strangled.
A tattoo on the right thigh gave the first clue about her identity: she was Jessie Ann Forde, an attractive 20-year-old who lived about 100 yards from the murder scene.
Detectives established that Jessie had left home on Saturday, December 3, to attend a dance. She visited a girlfriend in South Ruimveldt, and the two later went to the party. Jessie then returned to her friend’s home, where she stayed until Sunday evening, when she announced that she was returning home. From there on reports on her movements became sketchy.
A young man who knew Jessie told police that they both caught a ‘South bus’ that Sunday and Jessie came off at Mandela Avenue, at a junction which would have led her through North East la Penitence and to her home.
This report led police to suspect that she was attacked while walking through a desolate shortcut, known as ‘the dump’, about 100 yards from her home.
What is puzzling about this theory is that there was no reason for Jessie to have used this potentially dangerous short-cut at night when a much safer route existed. And if she had been slain on ‘the dump’, why had no one noticed the corpse in the frequently traversed route until it had begun to rot?
But while detectives were puzzled over these leads, another report surfaced: Jessie had never headed home at all. According to persons who knew her, she had caught a bus after leaving her friend’s home, but had stopped near a popular South Ruimveldt disco.
It is this version that her father believed.
Albert Forde was at sea in Cayenne when he received the news of his daughter’s brutal death. He made it home a few hours before Jessie was laid to rest.
After the initial shock subsided, he joined the police in an attempt to hunt down his daughter’s killers.
But, dissatisfied with the progress of the police probe, Forde hired the service of a close friend, and the two began their own investigations.
In 1990, the distraught father offered a $250,000 reward for information on the case.
“I fought them (the killers) with the only weapon I had…money,” Forde said.
Responses to his appeal were almost immediate, he recalled. After several false leads, Forde said he finally identified four men who were responsible for his daughter’s death.

PORNOGRAPHY RING
Dismissing reports that Jessie had headed home that fateful Sunday, Forde believes that after the Saturday night dance, his daughter, encouraged by friends, stopped at the disco in South Ruimveldt. He said he learnt that some people who frequented the disco were involved in a pornography ring, and also in the drug trade.
Forde says he learned from someone who knew the suspects, that the ring would entice young women into their homes, where the girls would then be forced to participate in various sexual acts which were video-taped.
The cassettes, the informant said, would then be distributed overseas, and also used to blackmail the victims.
“They would excite or lure the girls who wanted a ride in a big car… they’d buy them things and then take them to (their) base.”
He believed that Jessie’s trusting nature may have caused her to fall into the clutches of the alleged ring.
“Jessie had a weakness. She never believed that people were bad. She had to suffer first to learn.”
Two years after Jessie’s death, Forde said that he was approached by a man who claimed he was a witness to the young woman’s murder at the base where the ring operated.
“He took no money from me. He told me he had daughters, and that the murder had been on his mind for a long time. He said he had remained silent because he feared for his safety, but was willing to speak now because two men who had killed her were not around.”

‘BLUE’ MOVIE
According to the former boat captain, the alleged eyewitness confirmed that Jessie had visited the disco four days before she was found dead. The trouble reportedly started when the gang attempted to force Jessie into sexual acts for a ‘blue’ movie.
“I learned that after Jessie realised what they were doing, she started to fight them,” Forde said. “She screamed and told them she would have them locked up.
After they couldn’t silence her, one of the men ‘locked off’ her neck. When he did that, she was close to death. They then attempted to revive her by placing her body in a tub of water.”
After they realised that she was dead, the men reportedly forced Jessie’s body in a car trunk where it remained for two days. She was then taken in the car, and dumped on a dam near her home, the ‘eyewitness’ allegedly told Forde.
“One of the suspects knew where I was living,” Forde alleged. He believes Jessie’s murderers placed the corpse near the short-cut to give the impression that she was slain while on her way home.
According to Forde, he made several cassette recordings of the conversation he had with the alleged eyewitness, in which the suspects were identified.
Mr. Forde subsequently allowed me to listen to a cassette in which a man – reportedly the same informant – claimed that he had witnessed Jessie Forde’s murder.
The man on the tape gave details of how the alleged killers disposed of the corpse.
I subsequently tracked down the alleged informant, but he was reluctant to speak with me.
According to Forde, a copy of the recorded confession was handed to senior police officials. A security official under the former government was also reportedly informed.
He said the alleged eyewitness also gave a written statement about the murder to senior police officials.
Forde said that after receiving the statement, the police intensified their probe into Jessie’s murder. But by then, two of the main suspects had already slipped out of the country.
Both suspects were reportedly given lengthy jail terms in the United States; one for murder, the other for drug trafficking.
Nevertheless, he was bitter that they have managed to slip through the hands of local police.

“I WILL NOT REST UNTIL THEY ARE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE”
“It was a brutal murder. I relive the moment over and over again. But I believe that my path and the killers’ path will cross again. I will not rest until they are brought to justice.”
Questioned about Forde’s bizarre story, a police official denied the existence of the recorded statement by the alleged eyewitness.
The source confirmed that Forde had approached two former government officials with what he claimed was information that implicated four persons in his daughter’s death, after expressing dissatisfaction with progress of the police probe.
However, after perusing documents related to the investigation, the officials, including personnel with a background in criminal investigation, concluded that the probe was a thorough one.
One of the officials also confirmed that a man claiming to be an eyewitness to the crime was also questioned.
“But his story didn’t quite ring true. Most of what he said could not be verified, and we couldn’t use it as evidence,” the official said.
The man’s story about the alleged pornographic ring was however investigated, but no evidence surfaced to indicate that the story was true.
Police, another source confirmed, had initially investigated reports that Jessie Forde was last seen alive at a South Ruimveldt residence at which a ‘blue film’ was being made.
The owner of the home, who reportedly knew the victim, was detained several times and grilled. His home and car were also checked for evidence, but nothing was found to link the suspect with the young woman’s death. In addition, the police questioned several persons who claimed that the South Ruimveldt resident was at a boxing match at the National Park, and later at a dance on the East Coast of Demerara on the night Jessie Forde was slain.
Other persons, including a young man Forde claimed was a suspect in his daughter’s death, were also questioned, the source said.
The police official said detectives had begun to question several young men in the North East La Penitence area where Jessie Forde had lived, but claimed their investigations were frequently hindered by Forde.
“He wanted to do the investigation himself,” the source said.
But if Forde is wrong, who was it that killed Jessie?
In 1995, shortly after I published a story about this case, I received a call from a woman who said that she had information that could possibly lead to Jessie Forde’s killer.
We met shortly after, and the woman revealed that she had lived in North East La Penitence at the time when Jessie was murdered.
According to the woman, the night before Jessie’s body was discovered, she was disturbed by a splashing sound outside her house.
She peeped outside and saw a male neighbour coming through the muddy shortcut near ‘the dump’.
The very next day, Jessie’s body was found in the same shortcut.
The woman distinctly recalled that all the residents in the immediate area had attempted to see Jessie’s corpse—everyone, that is, except the man who she had seen near the track the night before.
Instead, she recalled, the man had paced up and down the street, while saying uncomplimentary things about Jessie Forde. But at no time did he attempt to take a look at her body.
Unfortunately, because she feared for her safety, the woman had never passed this information on to the police. By the time she contacted me, some seven years after Jessie Ann Forde’s murder, the man who she suspected might have killed Forde had migrated.
As far as I know, he has never returned to these shores.

If you have further information on this case or any other, please contact us at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown office or by telephone.
We can be reached on telephone numbers 225-8465, 225-8491, or 225-8458. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address mjdragon@hotmail.com.

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