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The dead woman in the hotel washroom
By Michael Jordan
At around 3:55 am on Monday, October 20, 2003, a miner who was staying at the Modern Hotel in First Avenue, Bartica, went to the bottom flat to use the washroom. But when he stepped into the washroom area, the hotel guest saw something that immediately made him forget about answering a call of nature. 
Lying on the washroom floor was a woman’s body. The victim was clad in brown underwear, and her legs were bound with copper wire. There were no visible marks of violence, but the victim had bled from the nostrils. A post mortem would reportedly reveal that she had been struck in the head and manually strangled.
Gertrude Cruickshank, a resident of Sixth Avenue, learned about the murder in the Modern Hotel at around six-thirty that same day. She was singing religious songs when an elderly male neighbour came over to her house.
Mrs. Cruickshank had a sore knee, and the resident enquired about the knee. The woman sensed that there was more to the visit than the neighbour enquiring about her health. She asked the neighbour about the true nature of his visit, and it was then that he tearfully told her about the murder, and that the victim was her daughter.
The daughter, Micelle Mc Lean, a 28-year-old mother of three, had left home at around 11:00 am. She had indicated she was going to a former boyfriend for lunch, and would be home by 3:00 pm. She reportedly attended a crusade around 7:00 pm, then stopped at a vendor’s stall, where she collected an egg-ball and a beverage to take to a miner who had contracted malaria and was staying at the Modern Hotel. That was the last time she was seen alive.
Shortly after the body was found, police took six individuals into custody.
Among them was a miner who had booked Room 16 at the Modern Hotel, from October 16 to October 21. While there appeared to be no clear motive, investigators were told that Micelle Mc Lean was last seen in his company. There were also reports that a bloodstained shirt, which allegedly belonged to the miner, was found in an occupied room at the hotel.
From what Mrs. Cruickshank recalls, the miner had claimed that he had come out of the interior to extract a tooth.
One theory was that Michelle had somehow encountered the suspect when she went to the hotel to take the snack to her sick friend.
Mrs. Cruickshank believes that the killer had intended to dispose of her daughter’s body in the river, which was just a few yards away. She believes that the presence of a security guard at the premises thwarted this plan. But with no clear motive, and no eyewitnesses, investigators eventually released all of their suspects.
But now, almost 14 years later, Mrs. Cruickshank disclosed to me that an individual had approached her with information which suggested that the police who had investigated her daughter’s murder had interviewed Michelle’s killer.
The visitor said that he had befriended the suspect when the two men were serving a stretch in prison. The suspect’s associates had nicknamed him ‘The Baby’, because they claimed that he would easily crack under pressure and cry like “a baby.”
“The Baby” lived in Greater Georgetown and also worked in the interior.
But Mrs. Cruickshank never passed this information to the police. She believes that too much time has passed for the police to ever implicate the suspect in her daughter’s death. “Police in Bartica hardly solve murders here, and so many people (who might have information) have died out,” she says. “God is the judge.”
If you have any information about this or any other unusual case, please contact Kaieteur News at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown location.
We can be reached on telephone numbers 22-58465, 22-58491 or 22-58473.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email addresses [email protected], or [email protected]
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