Latest update April 3rd, 2026 12:35 AM
Buried at last, but justice still missing for Walleta Rigby
(Kaieteur News) – Nearly five years after her disappearance, the family of 38-year-old Walleta Rigby was finally able to lay her to rest on Thursday, bringing a measure of closure to a case still shrouded in unanswered questions and lingering suspicions.
Rigby, a market vendor who traded in New Amsterdam, Georgetown and Linden, was believed to have drowned in the Takatu River in 2021 after the boat she was travelling in capsized while returning from Brazil. Years later, forensic testing confirmed that human remains found in Lethem were hers, allowing her family to proceed with burial.
Dead, Waletta Rigby
While relieved to finally perform the last rites, relatives say the circumstances of Rigby’s death remain deeply troubling. Her mother, Waveney August, told reporters at the funeral in Friends Village, East Bank Berbice, that she was informed as far back as 2023 that her daughter, a mother of five, was murdered.
“I was at the market selling, and a young man, a soldier boy told me that he was traveling on a boat, and he hear a young man saying that he drowned my daughter in Lethem.” August related that she contacted the police in Lethem and conveyed what she was told. The police conducted a successful search, and requested that she travel to Lethem to confirm whether or not the human remains discovered by the border square was her daughter’s.
August was able to identify the remains by making out Rigby’s natural bowed legs, and a quantity of underwear she noted her daughter was fond of. Subsequently, the police informed her that they could not charge anyone, and the case fell through. She remains adamant, however, that the suspect identified ended her daughter’s life. “I know to myself that he killed my daughter. He did it. And my granddaughter knows about it also…and the boat man and the girl who said she was holding on to the tree, they know…I need justice for my child. My child had to go in that small box, and it’s really hard. She left five children, and I’m supporting four of them.”
In January, 2025, after DNA testing, August said she received a call from the police while on a trip to England confirming that the remains were indeed Rigby’s. At a small service attended by a handful of close relatives and friends, Walleta’s skeletal remains were buried.
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