Bullets for a banker

May 21, 2017 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

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-why did someone execute Thomas Orderson?

By Michael Jordan

If the man lying motionless near the white Mitsubishi Lancer had been some shady underworld figure, then it would have been understandable that he would have died the way he did. But the victim was Thomas Orderson; a respectable, law-abiding family man with a loving wife and four children. He was also an assistant manager at a leading bank.
Bank managers don’t often end up dead on the seawall with bullets in their chests.
Death was the last thing on the minds of the Orderson household on Sunday, December 4, 2005.
It was still three weeks away from Christmas, but Thomas Orderson and his wife, Jillian, were already making preparations for the festive season. The couple did some shopping that morning, then returned to their Meadowbrook home at around 14:00 hrs.
About an hour later, Mr. Orderson informed his wife that he was going out with some friends, one of whom was celebrating his birthday. Mr. Orderson himself had celebrated his forty-sixth birthday just a week before.
The friends went to a Soesdyke/Linden Highway creek, before returning to Georgetown at around 21:00 hrs. According to one of the friends, they all headed home after that.
Sometime during the night, Jillian Orderson called her husband on his cellular phone and he responded by saying that he would be home soon. But within an hour of that call, Thomas Orderson was a dead man.
It was sometime around 22:30 hrs that police at CID Headquarters, Eve Leary, received information that the body of a man was lying near the Kingston Seawall, just behind the National Insurance Scheme Sports Club ground.
On arriving at the scene, detectives observed the corpse of a man of African ancestry, dressed in jeans and grey sweater, lying next to a white Mitsubishi Lancer, licence number PJJ 1221. Someone had shot him twice in the right side of the chest. One of the car’s windows had been shattered.
Robbery was clearly not the motive. The victim was wearing two gold rings, while his cellular phone and other items were intact.
The detectives were left to conclude that this was yet another execution-style killing. A handgun had been used to carry out the act. The shots had apparently been discharged from outside the car.
A bank card identified the slain man as Thomas Orderson, an assistant manager at Citizens Bank and Honorary President of the Georgetown Football League.
Bad news travels fast, and the banking fraternity received the grim news a few hours after it had occurred. Orderson’s colleagues all reacted with disbelief.
One friend thought that he had received a crank call and hung up the phone. But just to make sure, he dialed Mr. Orderson’s cell phone. He realized that something was seriously wrong when Orderson failed to answer and the family’s land line rang out.
The victim’s wife, Jillian Orderson, was awakened by her 14-year-old daughter to answer the phone. The caller informed Mrs. Orderson that someone had shot her husband and requested that she go to the Georgetown Public Hospital to collect his belongings.
As the news of Orderson’s death continued to circulate, the question everyone was asking was: who would want to execute the assistant bank manager?
Friends and colleagues all regarded Mr. Orderson as a hardworking and honest man who would help anyone who went to him for assistance. But many said that if Thomas Orderson had one fault, it was that he always spoke his mind.
As Honorary President of the Georgetown Football League, he was frequently in verbal scraps with officials in the football fraternity, particularly when he felt that things were not being done to his standards.
Detectives were told that one verbal dispute had led to a former member of the Guyana Football Federation issuing death threats against Orderson and his family.
In a letter dated November 24, 2008 to the General Secretary of the Guyana Football Federation, Orderson claimed that the GFF member told him: “I have people who will rape your family and burn your home…and it will only take four gunmen to take you out.” Police said that the threats were never reported to them.
On Saturday, December 10, 2005, detectives questioned a former football coach, about the threats. The man denied killing Orderson or issuing the threats, and was released after giving a statement.
In an interview with Kaieteur News, the former football coach conceded that he had had a verbal dispute with Orderson at a football ground, but denied that he had issued any threats against the bank official.
According to him, Orderson had “made enemies with a lot of people”, whom he did not name.
”I know that I ain’t kill he, and God know that I ain’t kill he,” the man said.
In the initial stages of their investigation, the detectives even detained one of Orderson’s friends, after receiving information that the man’s car was seen on the seawall around the time that Orderson was slain. They soon concluded that this was a false lead and released the friend.

EYEWITNESS?
They then managed to track down a woman who appeared to have vital information about Orderson’s death. According to the woman, she was in the vicinity of the seawall that Sunday night with a male companion, when she saw a car drive up to Mr. Orderson’s vehicle.
She said that the occupants discharged gunshots at Mr. Orderson’s vehicle before driving away. The woman alleged that she fled the scene and could not identify the gunmen or the car. Then the trail appeared to lead to New Amsterdam, Berbice.
It was there that police arrested a man who was suspected to be involved in shady transactions. Their information suggested that the man had arranged Orderson’s execution.
But after questioning him at CID Headquarters, Eve Leary, the police were forced to release their suspect, since they had failed to implicate him. The detectives were now right back where they had started; with no clear motive, and no suspects.
Detectives who spoke to Kaieteur News said that they are still no closer to identifying his killers.
“One or two people were hinting that they knew things, but they were not coming forward,” one investigator said. In 2008, a police source said that ballistics tests conducted on bullet casings found at the Kingston seawall area where Orderson was slain, matched those that police had retrieved from a robbery in the city involving a female victim.
The police official said that the robbery occurred sometime before Orderson was killed. Nothing came out of that lead.
So, the questions remain. Why was this respectable assistant bank manager executed? Who are his killers? What was he doing at the Kingston seawall that night? Did someone lure him there or trail him to the spot?
Unanswered questions like these have taken their toll on the Orderson family, particularly on the victim’s father, Bertie Orderson.
According to family members, Orderson’s father “went to great lengths” to find his son’s killers. However, he suffered a stroke and eventually passed away.
Family members are convinced that the pain of losing his son affected the elder man’s health and eventually caused his demise.
Jillian Orderson has told me she doesn’t believe that her husband’s killers will ever face justice. “Right now I have given up hope that anything will come out of it,” she said.
“We are hearing different things, how somebody was paid to do it. Today you would hear it had to do with football, and tomorrow somebody will tell you something else, so you just let it go.”
And despite recent police success in cracking several cold cases, another relative feels that it would be practically futile for family members to approach the present police hierarchy in an attempt to get to the bottom of this 12-year-old mystery.
According to the relative, one reason for this reluctance is that reopening the investigation would only cause the family to relive the trauma of Mr. Orderson’s death.
“I don’t think it would make any sense (us asking for the case to be reopened), but if they decide to do it on their own, I would co-operate.”

If you have any further information on this case or any other, please contact us at our Lot 24 Saffon Street office or by telephone.
We can be reached on telephone numbers 22-58458, 22-58465, 22-58473, or 22-58491. You need not disclose your identity. You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address: mjdragon@hotmail.com.

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