A wife strangled in Germany and two dead women in Guyana

Dec 15, 2019 Murder and Mystery, News

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By Michael Jordan

The former American soldier looked me straight in the eye and told me that he was no killer. Maybe so, but surely he must be one of the unluckiest chaps I have ever met. How many guys end up being accused of brutally murdering their wife, their ex-girlfriend, and a teenage girl, in two different countries?
I’d called him for an interview about these three still-unsolved murders. Half an hour later, this bearded, bespectacled guy was sitting in our interview room, and we were talking about his former wife’s murder in Germany, and the two dead women in New Amsterdam.

“I killed no one,” he told me. “There are people in New Amsterdam who know what happened to those two young ladies. There are people that know who is responsible for my late wife’s death, and they know it’s not me.”
From what he says, his troubles began around April 2004. Back then, he was a Specialist in the US Army, married to 30-year-old Chevonne Talbot, and living at a US base in Germany. According to him, he was also serving in Iraq and his marriage was on the rocks.
“I came back from combat in April of that year to find that I no longer had a wife; that someone (else) was in my place.” The ex-soldier said he found out about his spouse’s infidelity from provocative text messages that were sent to her.
The ex-soldier said that he confronted her and later told his wife that he wanted a divorce.
But on October 12, 2004, Chevonne Talbot was found lying face-down on the bathroom floor in the army housing unit at Hainerberg Housing Area, in Germany, where the couple had lived. It was her husband who found the body.
“I found her dead. I found her in the bathroom. From the way her body was positioned, she looked like she was trying to enter the tub and slipped. I moved her and tried to resuscitate her. I called my unit and they dispatched the MPs, and they dispatched the ambulance… and half an hour later, they pronounced her dead.”
But a bathroom fall hadn’t killed Chevonne Talbot. Someone had tied a scarf tightly around her neck and also used it to bind her hands behind her back. An autopsy would reveal that she had died of ligature strangulation.
Her husband gave the police a statement, and it is this statement that reportedly turned him from grieving spouse to murder suspect.
According to the ex-soldier, he had told police that it was he, and not his wife, who was having an affair. This apparently led detectives to believe that he was concealing a motive for the crime. He admitted that he had also tried to kill himself after her death.
“I became a suspect because of that lie. I had no reason to want her dead when I had already made up my mind, six months before her death, that I was divorcing her.”
Several months later, he was charged with murder. However, he was eventually freed on May 1, 2007, since, according to the ex-soldier, he was able to account for his movements at the time of his wife’s death. He said that a female prosecution witness, who was also his next-door neighbour, also placed him away from the scene.
“There was conflict in the time of death, because I showed up at work early and left work and came back a few hours later; and what was being said was that I went home, killed her, and came back to work.
“But that young lady next door told investigators that there was no way that she (the wife) could have been dead before two o’clock in the afternoon, because she saw her taking out the garbage at around two. I found her two hours later. Her testimony debunked the testimony of the pathologist who said that she died in the morning.
“She was the person who gave me my salvation, because without her testimony of seeing my wife at two o’clock in the afternoon, I wouldn’t have been in this interview with you, I would have been at Fort Leavenworth doing 99 years.”
And according to his story, there was a prime suspect in his wife’s death. He said that the individual was a male friend of his wife. He claims that the individual told investigators that he was watching television at the time when Mrs. Talbot was slain.
The former U.S. soldier returned to Guyana in December 2008, and shortly after, started a relationship with 25-year-old Nekescia Rouse, who lived at Smythfield, New Amsterdam. He says that it was a one-week affair.
“I flew into Guyana a few days before Christmas 2008. I was walking down Main Street, New Amsterdam, and I saw her. It was brief…one week…but from there we developed a friendship.”
But at around 06:30 a.m. on Sunday, February 15, 2009, a resident of Smythfield, New Amsterdam, stumbled on a gruesome scene. Lying in a yard, under a tree was the mutilated body of a young woman. She was identified as 18-year-old Alexis ‘Keisha’ George.
About 30 minutes later, the body of another woman was found in a house some 150 metres away. The second victim was Nekescia Rouse, the former soldier’s ex-girlfriend.
Both women had lived with Rouse’s mother at Smythfield. They had both sustained stab wounds to the neck and other parts of the body.
Investigators suspected that the women were attacked in the house in which Rouse’s body was found, but that Alexis George had managed to run outside before collapsing and dying in a neighbour’s yard. It was unclear how the killer(s) had gained entry to the house to attack the two victims, though there were suggestions that the individual (s) had entered via a verandah door. One detective surmised that the women knew their killers.
“There was no forced entry to the house. Whoever did this was more or less invited in or frequented the premises.”
Detectives scoured the murder scenes and even searched inside a septic tank for the murder weapon. They never found it. They learned that Nekescia had gone out with friends on Valentine’s Night and had returned home during the early hours of the Sunday on which the women were slain.
According to reports, June Rouse, Nekescia’s mother, had received a rather strange call on her mobile phone at around 5:20 a.m. on Sunday, February 15. The caller, whom she did not recognize, reportedly enquired, ‘where Nicky deh?’
Shortly after the murders, police detained seven individuals from New Amsterdam. Among them was the retired US Army soldier who had been accused, then cleared, of killing his wife in Germany.
A former policeman who had gone out with Nekescia Rouse on Valentine’s Night, and who had frequented the home, was also taken into custody.
The former soldier told me that he had called Nekescia on February 14, to wish her ‘Happy Valentine’s Day.’ He estimates that this call was made some 12 hours before she was slain.
Like the two slain women, he was also living in Smythfield, New Amsterdam. But he also claims that at the time of the tragedy, he was stricken with kidney stones. The painful condition, he says, had kept him in bed and practically unable to move around.
He says that on Sunday, February 15, 2009, several armed policemen came to the house where he was staying.
According to the man, he had known the purpose of their visit, since someone had already called him to inform him of Nekescia Rouse’s murder. He alleged that without mentioning the double-murder, the policemen said they wanted to search the premises.
“One detective said that he saw blood on my clothing. They took my sandals, because they said they saw blood on the sandals. No blood was ever found on my belongings.”
According to his story, without being read his rights, he was booked; and without ever producing a writ, police kept him in custody for over 72 hours.
“I never thought that I would spend the next six days and nights handcuffed and locked behind prison walls.” He said that he was moved from one police station to the next…”every day, sent to someplace more inhumane.”
On February 20, 2009, he was eventually released on $100,000 station bail. The former soldier says that police never returned his belongings.
Investigators apparently are yet to unearth any tangible evidence to implicate anyone in the double-homicide.
He insists that he could not have committed the heinous double-murder without someone spotting him, since there is only one way in and out of the area where the victims lived.
But the ex-soldier complains that although “my integrity has been cleared,” there are still some individuals who continue to tarnish his name. He was reportedly also threatened.
“I’m constantly vilified. Wherever I go, I’m accused of being a murderer,” he says.
You know what? I’ve spoken to killers before. I’ve spoken to a guy on death row; an affable, smiling guy, who they say gutted a woman like a fish and tied a crankshaft and cement block to her body so it could sink in the Demerara River. He says he didn’t do it.
There’s another gentleman —an upright individual in society— who missed death row by the skin of his teeth. I believe, in my bones, that he strangled an 11-year-old girl and tried to make it look like suicide. He says he’s innocent.
And at the time when I did that interview, I wasn’t sure if this man was innocent or not. But about a week later, I spoke to a pastor who told me about a disturbing encounter he’d had with an individual who was questioned by the police about this case.
The pastor told me that the individual had issued violent threats to him.
That interview left me with a sense of unease, an eerie feeling that the circumstances surrounding a strangled woman in Germany, and two others young women knifed to death in Guyana, may possess a common thread.

If you have any information about this or any other unusual case, please contact Kaieteur News by letter or telephone at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown offices. Our numbers are 592-225-8465, 592-225-8473 and 592-225-8458. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address kamarangnight @gmail.com.

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