The cat, the corpse and the killer

Nov 03, 2019 Murder and Mystery, News

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By Michael Jordan

When I took him in to CID Headquarters. Eve Leary, six years ago, the youth they called ‘Big Foot’ didn’t seem to have a clue or care that I was taking him in for murder. It bothered me then, and, from what I have since learned, it now bothers me even more.

On the morning of Wednesday, November 13, 2013, hotel handyman Wendell Eastman went to see his boss. That was Joseph Jagdeo, the proprietor of the South Central Hotel, located at Lot 208 South Road. It was hotel by name only. It was actually one of the last remaining brothels in Georgetown, catering to drug-addicted prostitutes and other sex workers on the lowest rung of the ladder.
Eastman’s story is that he approached Jagdeo’s room, and noticed that the door was slightly open. He would later tell me that he called a few times, got no answer, assumed that his boss was sleeping, and left.
But by nightfall, Jagdeo still had not appeared.
Eastman says that at around 6:00 a.m. the following morning, he was filling water near to Room Nine, which Jagdeo occupied, when he observed his boss’s pet cat by Jagdeo’s office door.
He said that after a while, the cat began scratching on the wall of Room 10 and started purring.
He says he found the cat’s behaviour to be unusual and this prompted him to call Patrick Wilson, another hotel employee. He said that he told his colleague about the cat’s strange behaviour. He then peered through a louvre window in the room and saw the door keys to Room 10 on the bed.

He said he pushed a pipe through the window and snagged the keys. He handed the keys over to Wilson, who opened the room door.
According to Eastman, the cat made a sudden dash into the room and ran back out, purring. Eastman says he warned Wilson not to go into the room.
Kneeling in a passageway next to the room, Eastman peered inside and said he saw exactly what had alarmed the cat.
Beneath the bed was the body of 62-year-old Joseph Jagdeo.
Someone had used strips from pillowcases to gag the brothel owner and tie his hands.
A post mortem would reveal the cause of death as haemorrhage due to blunt trauma to the head, compounded by suffocation and compression to the neck. Whoever had killed Jagdeo had also broken his neck and spine.
But who could that killer be, and what was his, or her motive?
Jagdeo’s wife told me that he had only kept small sums of cash on the premises. The only item that appeared to be missing was a cell phone that Jagdeo had reportedly recently bought.
Jagdeo had been running the South Central ‘guest house’ for about 20 years. He had made the news in the nineteen nineties when he had locked his gates to sex workers who refused to show their HIV results.
Detectives began to take a close look at some of Jagdeo’s employees and those who frequented the ‘guest house.’
Reports indicate that the guesthouse owner was slain some time on Wednesday, November 13, 2013. One of the women who frequented the brothel told me that she last saw Jagdeo alive at around eight-thirty a.m. that day, when she went to the businessman’s office, since she owed him money. She said that he then went into the compound for a few minutes before going back inside.
Another woman said that she went to the guest house’s barmaid at around 10:00 hrs that same Wednesday to rent Room Ten, which is the same room in which Jagdeo was subsequently found.
However, she said that the barmaid told her “don’t use room ten, use room fifteen.” The woman said that she was puzzled by the barmaid’s response, since she usually used room ten ‘for business.’ The woman said that while heading for her room, she observed that Room Ten was shut.
Detectives detained the barmaid and about four others. Among them was a sex worker who had an interesting story to tell.
On Tuesday, November 12, she had reportedly met up with a young man known as ‘Big Foot’ in Pike Street, Kitty.
She had known ‘Big Foot’ when the two were serving time at the New Opportunity Corps (NOC). The woman and ‘Big Foot’ later occupied a room at the South Central ‘hotel.’
Further, it is alleged that later on the same day, November 12, one of Jagdeo’s cell phones disappeared. The girlfriend said she subsequently gave the hotel owner the phone and claimed that her boyfriend, ‘Big Foot,’ had stolen it.
It is alleged that Jagdeo bought another cell phone and also told ‘Big Foot’ that he would have to vacate the premises by Wednesday, November 13, 2013.
The girlfriend alleged that she had put ‘Big Foot’ out of her room after finding him with the stolen phone. In a statement to police, she allegedly said that the maintenance man at the ‘hotel’ felt sorry for ‘Big Foot’ and permitted him to stay in Room 10.
Police received more evidence that seemed to implicate ‘Big Foot’ after arresting a woman, Shauntel De Younge, with the slain man’s phone.
Kiana Garnett, a friend of De Younge’s, alleged that on November 13, 2013, they were going to purchase a ‘Chinese food’ when they saw ‘Big Foot.’
‘Big Foot’ allegedly asked them if they wanted a phone and “Shauntel replied yes.”
‘Big Foot’ allegedly sold a small silver Nokia cell phone to De Younge for $4,000 and told her “not to answer it when anyone calls.”
That phone allegedly belonged to Joseph Jagdeo.
On November 30, 2013, police issued a wanted bulletin for 19-year-old Brian Leitch, called “Big Foot,” in connection with the murder of South Central proprietor Joseph Jagdeo.
The bulletin gave the suspect’s last known address as Lot 2118 Diamond Housing Scheme, East Bank Demerara.
But on November 30, before police could arrest him, Leitch and his mother turned up at the Kaieteur News.
Leitch’s mother said she knew that her son was wanted by the police after seeing a bulletin and photograph of him in the Kaieteur News. She disclosed that he was released in 2011 from the NOC.
She indicated that she did not want any trouble with the police and wanted him to turn himself in.
As for Leitch, he sat silently in our editorial department, seemingly untroubled, sometimes smiling, and apparently unaware of his predicament. He did not even seem to recognize the South Central Hotel when we showed him a photograph of the premises.
Meek as a lamb, Leitch, the suspect in a violent killing, accompanied me and his mother to CID Headquarters, Eve Leary. He was subsequently handed over to detectives at the Brickdam Police Station.
There, he allegedly gave police an unsworn statement in which he confessed to attacking and binding Jagdeo.
According to a detective, he put the accusation of murder to Leitch after cautioning him.
Leitch, police allege, first said, “I don’t know anything about any murder.”
In the caution statement, Leitch allegedly recounted that Joseph Jagdeo had come to his room at the hotel and asked him to leave.
Leitch, the statement alleged, related that he was “very angry” at what Jagdeo told him and tied the hotel owner’s hands, while also tying another piece of cloth around Jagdeo’s mouth.
In the statement attributed to the suspect, Leitch allegedly confessed that he pushed Jagdeo under the bed in the room before throwing the door keys on the bed.
“I then guh in he (Jagdeo) office and tek he cell phone. I sorry for what I made happen. I didn’t mean to kill he,” Leitch allegedly stated.
On December 2, 2013, 19-year-old Brian Leitch was charged and remanded for murder. A photograph shows Leitch with that same ‘spaced out’ smile as he entered the docks.
When his trial began early 2018 he was unable to hire an attorney and two attorneys for the state, (Hewley Griffith and Lawrence Harris) represented him.
Giving unsworn testimony from the docks April, 2018 Leitch stated, “I don’t know anything about any murder. I did not kill anyone.”
But the unsworn confession statement that police said Leitch allegedly made was also admitted as evidence.
Attorney Harris suggested to the court that none of the ranks who questioned Leitch had asked the accused if he was literate. Sergeant Conway, who gave evidence, acknowledged that he had not asked Leitch if he could read or write. He was also unable to say if Sergeant Bowman (retired) who took the statement, had done so.
The sergeant stated that he and Retired Sergeant Bowman read the statement to Leitch and informed him that he could request to alter, correct or change it.
The witness added that the statement was also given to Leitch for him to read, and that he looked at it as though he was reading.
“You are not being truthful to this court,” Leitch’s attorney told the sergeant, who responded: “I am telling the truth and nothing but the truth.”
Statements from the woman who claimed Leitch had sold her a cell phone, and statements from the woman who had stayed at the hotel room with the accused, were also presented at the trial. However, none of the two women appeared to testify.
On April 17, 2018, Leitch was found guilty on the lesser charge of manslaughter. A month later, Justice Sandil Kissoon, the presiding judge, sentenced him to 33 years imprisonment.
Before the sentence was handed down, Attorney Harris pleaded with the court to consider his client’s “hard upbringing”, as well as his age and the time he had already spent in prison.
A probation report stated that Leitch came from a single parent home.
The accused was said to have gravitated to crime at an early age, and he was sentenced to serve time at the New Opportunity Corps.
According to the report, after his release from the NOC, Leitch tried his hands at several skilled jobs but soon returned to wrongdoing.
In calculating the sentence, Justice Kissoon deducted five years for the time the accused was on remand. However, he added three years because of Leitch’s criminal record and five years “for cruelty used in the commission of crime.”
Last year, one of the attorneys representing Leitch said that while the youth appeared to have been a petty thief, he is convinced that Leitch did not murder Joseph Jagdeo. He described Leitch as being “way below average intelligence”.
“He was ‘spaced out’…he hadn’t a clue what was happening (to him).”
According to the attorney, there appears to be evidence that Leitch had already left the hotel during the period that the proprietor was slain.
He also expressed concern that “several key witnesses” did not turn up to testify. And in his view, there’s more to Joseph Jagdeo’s murder than it appears.
The case, he says, is being appealed. He plans to prove his client’s innocence.
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].

 

 

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