The women in the cemeteries

Oct 27, 2019 Murder and Mystery, News

The gravedigger was used to seeing corpses, but certainly not like the one he was seeing now. What was a woman doing here…pregnant, mutilated, dumped in Le Repentir cemetery?
The victim, found at just around three o’clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 25, 2005, lay in one of the cemetery’s trenches. She was dressed in a multi-coloured top and blue jeans. Police would ascertain that someone had stabbed her at least six times to the neck, side, back and stomach. An autopsy would later reveal that she was also strangled.

Found in Zeelugt Cemetery: Afroze Ali, called ‘Aunty Lizzy’

The other thing police observed was that she was pregnant.
Police observed bloodstains on the nearby roadway, as well as a pair of slippers, while a cigarette lighter was found nearby. They suspected that someone the victim knew had lured her to this spot.
But who was the killer, and who was the victim?
That night, Pamela Rampersaud, an Independence Boulevard resident was watching television when a local newscast aired the story of the body in the cemetery. The presenter gave a description of the victim and showed some of the items that were found at the scene. Rampersaud took one glance at the slippers and lighter and realised that she knew the victim.
It was her own daughter, 20-year-old Dioana Warrick, known as ‘Dee Dee.’
She would later tell me that Dioana, who was six months pregnant, lived at her home, but would sometimes stop at her boyfriend’s home in Evans Street, Charlestown.
But she said that on the night of Sunday, January 23, 2005, Dioana and her boyfriend, for whom she was said to be pregnant, turned up at her home. According to Rampersaud, the boyfriend came at around eight o’clock, while Dioana arrived at around ten.
She said that the two began quarreling and she intervened. According to her, the boyfriend said that he was no longer interested in Dioana, since he was unhappy with her lifestyle. He reportedly also said that he wanted Dioana to have an abortion, since he was building a house and would not be able to take care of a child. The boyfriend also allegedly gave Ms. Rampersaud $5,000 to help pay for the abortion.
In turn, Dioana reportedly said that she wanted out of the relationship, since her boyfriend was involved in relationships with two other women. Mrs. Rampersaud claimed that the quarrel escalated and the boyfriend and Dioana began to hurl threats at one another. She said that her daughter eventually left, saying that she was going to visit a female friend in Albouystown. Ms. Rampersaud said that she persuaded the boyfriend to stay back for some time, since she feared that the quarrel would escalate further. He reportedly left shortly after.
Ms. Rampersaud said that she was worried when her daughter failed to return home, but assumed that she and the boyfriend had patched things up and that she had spent the night at his home.
All this information the grieving mother also related to the police, who tried to locate the boyfriend. They failed to locate him. But he wasn’t in hiding. In fact, he was found at his workplace. The 26-year-old man was a cook at a city restaurant, and he expressed surprise that the police were looking for him.
He also expressed shock that his girlfriend had been murdered and vehemently denied killing her. He confirmed that he and Dioana had quarreled over her lifestyle and her pregnancy. But he claimed that it was Dioana who had wanted the abortion after he questioned the paternity of the child. He willingly removed his shirt to show that he had no scratches, and later turned himself over to police. They eventually released him…but who lured ‘Dee Dee’ to the cemetery at night, and killed her there, is today, still unknown…
PATRICIA YOUNG
Sunday, February 23, 2014, and, like many other Guyanese, 19-year-old Patricia Young travelled from her reputed husband’s Melanie, East Coast Demerara home to watch the Mash Day floats in Georgetown. Her movements after that are unclear.
According to one report, when the parade ended, Patricia, a former KFC employee, now employed at a call centre, joined a minibus for home. It was said that whenever she was in the city, the teen would inform her reputed husband that she was on her way and he would wait to escort her home when she disembarked from a minibus.
On Mash night, she reportedly sent him a text message, requesting credit for her phone so that she could call him when she was nearing her home. He reportedly tried reaching her by phone a few minutes later, but got no response.
It is said that when she failed to turn up, Young’s reputed husband became suspicious.
His suspicions turned to anxiety when Young still did not show up the following morning and a search was immediately launched. A missing person’s report was also lodged with the police.
At around 17:30 hrs on Wednesday, February 26, 2014, Young’s reputed husband announced that he had found one of Patricia’s sandals just outside the cemetery at Bachelor’s Adventure. He contacted the police.
The cops ventured into the cemetery, and near to a tree, they saw Patricia Young’s decomposing body.
Detectives surmised that someone had killed the teen on the roadway, where her slipper was found, and dumped the corpse in the cemetery. The victim’s mini-skirt was pulled up and her top was rolled up all the way to her neck.
She appeared to have been strangled, since there were no other visible marks of violence on the body. The reputed husband was taken into custody but after some intense questioning, investigators surmised that he had nothing to do with Young’s death.
One theory investigators examined was that Patricia Young may have been the victim of a gang rape. It was suggested that she was attacked just after disembarking the bus after leaving Georgetown on Mash night.
More than one resident had indicated that Young’s death appeared to be the work of more than one person. Young’s uncle, Lewis Young, believes that the victim had to be overpowered by more than one person.
“One person can’t do dat, because is nine ah we me mother get and she (Patricia) used to deh between all of us, ramping and thing…so she know she self…It had to be more than one person,” he said.
‘SONNY’S’ UNUSUAL FIND
On Sunday, January 15, 2012, a drug addict known as ‘Sonny’ went to the home of a female resident of Zeelugt, East Bank Essequibo, and said that the body of the woman’s daughter was in the Zeelugt cemetery.
Not quite believing, the relatives sent a boy to check. In the end, though, they too visited the burial site, where they found the partly nude body of 40-year-old Afroze Ali, called ‘Aunty Lizzy.’ The corpse was covered with a length of cardboard.
Cause of death was given as asphyxiation, due to manual strangulation. There was also blunt trauma to the head and detectives suspected sexual assault.
There were signs that the killer or killers had begun digging a shallow grave, but apparently abandoned that plan.
The woman was the fifth of nine siblings, and her life had been a tragic one.
A widow with four children, Ali had reportedly fallen into a state of depression after her husband was murdered some 13 years prior to her own death.
Relatives say it was customary for Ali to wander off for days before returning home.
When she had not turned up, they had assumed she had gone on one of her jaunts.
Some of the relatives found it strange that ‘Sonny’ had found the body.
“This man does sleep in the burial ground. He does smoke up and so on, and it is strange that he find the body, because the cardboard we find ‘Lizzy’ on is the same piece of cardboard he does use fuh sleep on,” one relative alleged.
Their suspicions were further aroused when ‘Sonny’ vanished from the neighbourhood. However, police located him some days later and detained the suspect and another drug addict.
But to the consternation of relatives, police found nothing to connect the drug addict to Ali’s murder.
Mohamed Rasool, a Trinidad-based sibling of the slain woman, said that after his sister’s funeral, he made some enquires about the suspects, only to be told by police that the suspect had been released.
Dissatisfied, the brother went to the Ministry of Home Affairs, and was assured that “the police will do their job.”
Rasool said that on Friday, February 3, 2012, he enquired from a senior CID rank at the Leonora Police Station about his sister’s murder.
“I asked him what the current status of the investigation was, and he told me that there was no new information concerning my sister’s murder, so they would not be able to do no further investigation,” he said.
“I told him that I went to the scene where my sister was murdered and found a piece of iron and I asked him, why the police did not pick up the iron for evidence. He then said to me that Guyana doesn’t have fingerprint experts.
“I then asked him what is the current status on the swab test result and he said to me that they didn’t get any result as yet.”
After expressing his suspicions about ‘Sonny’, a senior official at the Leonora Police Station reportedly instructed that the drug addict be re-arrested.
On Saturday February 4, 2012, ‘Sonny’ was arrested by a Rural Constable, who took him to the Leonora Police Station. Within minutes, he was released again.
“When Sonny arrived an officer said to release him. When I enquired why they released him, they said to me that Sonny is a ‘mad man’.” Rasool has said that he will not be satisfied until “someone is charged with the crime that cost my sister her life.”
But, six years later, like the murders of Dioana Warrick and Patricia Young, the trail in this murder in a cemetery also seems to have gone cold.
If you have any information about this unusual 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 592-225-8473, 592-225-8458, 592-225-8465, or 592-225-8491. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at 592-645-2447, or his email address: [email protected].