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Oct 20, 2013 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery
By Michael Jordan
It was just beginning to rain on the evening of Saturday, November 1, 2004, when five men entered Philip Bess’s yard in Stevedore Housing Scheme squatting area.
Bess, a 41-year-old driver employed at City Hall, was inside with his wife, Cheryl, called ‘Vi’, and three of their children.
The three little ones were asleep, but the couple’s 20-year-old daughter was outside, so she saw when the men entered her parents’ yard. She assumed that they were just seeking shelter from the rain, but then she saw two of the men separate themselves from the group, and walk over to the section of the house that the family had converted into a small shop.
Philip Bess’s daughter realised that it wasn’t the rain that had brought the men here.
She saw that one of the strangers – a tall, thin man – was packing a handgun, while his companion had an ice-pick. Without thinking twice, the young woman darted out of the yard and fled to a neighbour’s residence.
Meanwhile, inside the house, Philip Bess had just finished his dinner of fish and chips which his wife had prepared shortly after returning from church.
At around 18:30hrs, Cheryl was in the bedroom shutting the windows when she heard Philip yell out from inside the shop: “Vi, bring the blade (cutlass.)”
Cheryl went to the hallway to see what was amiss, in time to see her husband, with his vest badly torn, retreat from the shop into the house.
The woman peered into the shop and saw a slim, brown-skinned man, with his cap pulled down low. He was carrying a handgun. The stranger was accompanied by a man of similar build and complexion, who was wearing a du-rag that partly covered his corn-row plaits.
The gunman pointed his weapon at her husband, while his companion with the du-rag advanced menacingly to Cheryl Bess.
“Wheh de money deh?” he shouted at her.
“We ain’ got money, we just hustling,” Cheryl pleaded.
“Shut yuh mouth,” the bandit snapped. “Wheh de money deh?”
With that, he grabbed Cheryl’s chain and she shifted away from her husband and the gunman who was guarding him.
Despite her plight, she knew that Philip was in greater danger.
“Doan shoot he,” she begged.
The gunman slapped her, and Cheryl received further slaps as she continued to beg the men to spare her husband. And she soon realised that the gunmen had no intention of leaving eyewitnesses.
“You got to shoot that man, buddy, you got to shoot, yuh can’t just lef’ he hay,” the man guarding Cheryl said.
A loud explosion filed the house. Cheryl looked behind her and saw Philip lying on the floor with blood spurting from a hole in his chest.
“Shoot she too,” the gunman’s companion said.
Cheryl began to plead for her life. This appeared to appease the intruders, and the gunman’s companion dragged Cheryl to the dining room. He then stripped the distraught woman of her earrings and finger-rings.
The man then demanded that she hand over the family’s cash.
Cheryl knew that the couple had $60,000 stashed in their wardrobe. That money was to pay their monthly installment on a car that they had recently purchased. But fearing that the men would kill her, the woman handed the money over to the gunmen, who also picked up a CD player before fleeing.
By this time, the other Bess children had awakened. They became distraught on seeing their mortally wounded father on the floor.
Cheryl ran outside to summon help, and a neighbour eventually took Philip Bess to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where he succumbed.
The initial suspicion that detectives had was that the Bess household were victims of a vicious robbery. But Cheryl Bess suspected that there was more to it than that.
The couple had gone through some domestic problems after Cheryl found out that Philip was having an affair. Philip had admitted to the relationship, but reassured his wife that it had ended.
Sometime in 2004, Cheryl was riding her scooter in the vicinity of the South Ruimveldt Shopping Plaza, when a woman had accosted and taunted her. According to Mrs. Bess, the woman had even spat on her from a minibus.
Cheryl Bess said she reported the incident at the East La Penitence Police Station. She had then informed Philip, who allegedly then had an ugly confrontation with the woman.
The woman allegedly informed one of her brothers, who was a policeman, and the brother and an acquaintance allegedly confronted Philip at his workplace.
Cheryl Bess believes that Philip’s murder is linked to this confrontation. She alleged that one of the men who entered her home is related to the woman with whom her husband had the affair.
She said that acting on this information, police arrested some of the woman’s male relatives.
She said that some of them were placed on an identification parade. According to Mrs. Bess, it turned out that one of the men was the same bandit who had slapped her and ordered his companion to shoot her husband.
“But I was confused and nervous, so I failed to pick him out,” Mrs. Bess said. “I was looking for the shooter.”
According to Cheryl Bess, she also learned that the gunman is related to her husband’s ex-girlfriend. She alleged that the police picked the man up, but never placed him on an identification parade.
He was allegedly released before Cheryl Bess was even aware that he had been picked up. According to Mrs. Bess, she was informed by a man who was incarcerated at the same time that one of the suspects had admitted to being involved in her husband’s murder. The alleged killer had reportedly boasted that he had a ‘guard’ from Suriname and would never be caught.
She said that the family suffered financially and emotionally from her husband’s murder.
She was forced to close the shop and sell their car.
Mrs. Bess says that she occasionally sees her husband’s killer, who trades in Georgetown.
However, she has never been able to have him arrested, since he always makes himself scare when she is around.
She says he’s about five feet nine inches tall, brown in complexion, sports shoulder-length dreadlocks, and had an ‘open-face’ gold tooth.
She hopes that the police will reopen their investigations into this murder, which she is convinced was orchestrated by relatives of a scorned woman.
If you have any further information on this 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 22-58458, 22-58465, or 22-58491. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address: [email protected].
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