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Jun 12, 2016 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery
By Michael Jordan
Joseph Cummings awoke to a woman’s screams of ‘rape’ and ‘murder’ at around one o’clock on Sunday,
May 9, 2010. The screams and a tumbling sound were coming from the apartment of his neighbours, 23-year-old Bibi Rafeena Saymar, a hairdresser, and her 55-year-old reputed husband, Dennis Persaud. Nothing unusual there, Cummings thought; just one of the couple’s usual fights.
But when he peered outside and failed to see the husband’s vehicle, he realised that Saymar’s spouse was not at home. An intruder was attacking the hairdresser.
The screams eventually subsided and Cummings then saw a man coming down the steps. It definitely wasn’t Saymar’s husband. This man was dreadlocked, slim, and, in Cummings’ estimation, about five feet seven inches tall. The stranger headed east before disappearing from view.
After the man had left, and convinced that something was terribly wrong, Joseph Cummings emerged from his home and told his neighbours that “something happen to the girl upstairs.”
One of the neighbours was Shereena Madramootoo, who lived in the flat below Bibi Saymar’s. She called the police.
Saymar’s husband arrived about fifteen minutes later in his pickup. Cummings would later state that he stopped Dennis Persaud and told him: “something happen to your wife.”
Persaud reportedly said: “What? What?” and Cummings again said: “Something happen to your wife!”
Persaud reportedly then parked, locked the vehicle and put on the alarm before heading to the couple’s apartment. But shortly after, he ran back downstairs and shouted: “Y’all come, she on the floor.”
Cummings and other neighbours accompanied Persaud back to the flat. There they saw Bibi Rafeena
Saymar lying on the floor in a pool of blood. She was still alive and was groaning and pleading for help. Despite her injuries, she managed to describe her attacker by ancestry.
The neighbours then took the badly injured woman outside. By then, the police had arrived, but their vehicle got stuck in a ditch.
Neighbours helped to put Saymar in her reputed husband’s pickup and he took her to the Leonora Cottage Hospital. The police eventually returned with the reputed husband in their vehicle and told the neighbours that the woman had succumbed.
A post mortem would later show that she had sustained at least eleven stab wounds.
From that point, things became decidedly strange. Almost from the onset, police suspected that this was more than just a violent home invasion. They believed that Saymar’s reputed husband, a Canada-based Guyanese businessman, had plotted her death.
Investigators received reports that the victim had endured an abusive relationship. They immediately placed the husband in custody. Their theory was that Dennis Persaud had provided himself with an alibi by hiring someone to kill his wife.
And it appeared that the investigators were on the right track. The following day, detectives detained a young Charlestown resident in the vicinity of the Demerara Harbour Bridge. They alleged that the 22-year-old man, identified as Troy Green, had gone there under the impression that he would have met Dennis Persaud, and would have collected a sum of money from Persaud for killing the man’s wife.
Police later claimed that Green gave a statement, in which he confessed to killing Bibi Rafeena Saymar. A few days later, the husband and his alleged hit-man were charged.
Dennis Persaud smiled that day as he entered the Vreed-en-Hoop Magistrate’s Court. He smirked, even as they accused him of murdering his wife. I watched him, still smiling, as they ordered him remanded, while Troy Green, the man they said he had paid to do the job, sat nearby looking lost and dejected. I thought that it was all bravado, a show for us onlookers, and I thought that Dennis Persaud’s smile would vanish the minute he stepped through the gates at Camp Street Prison and rubbed shoulders with his newfound companions within its confines.
Now I think I know why Dennis Persaud smiled that day. Maybe he’d known, even then, how this case would play out.
By January 28, 2013, I had quite forgotten about the murdered hairdresser. Then I got a call that shocked me: Dennis Persaud had been released from prison.
It didn’t seem possible. I couldn’t call Persaud’s attorney, Vicramadictya ‘Vic’ Puran. He had died in a quite bizarre accident. I decided to check with the lawyer’s daughter, Mishka Puran, who had represented Troy Green. She confirmed that Persaud was no longer in prison.
What had happened was that after Persaud and Green were committed to stand trial in the High Court, Persaud’s attorney, ‘Vic’ Puran, filed a motion with Chief Justice (ag) Ian Chang to have the case quashed on the grounds that the court lacked sufficient evidence to charge his client. The Chief Justice ruled in favour of Puran and the accused husband was released. Persaud immediately high-tailed it back to Canada.
But what of the accused hit-man, Troy Green?
Mishka Puran, who was his attorney during the preliminary hearing, was no longer representing him. The alleged hit-man was left to face the music. And he couldn’t afford an attorney. He had one, slim life-line: Chief Justice Chang had also ordered that Green be subjected to a new preliminary inquiry. This was held at the Vreed-en-Hoop Magistrate’s Court, and the magistrate hearing the matter eventually ruled that the State had a case. That meant that Green’s case would be heard before a judge and jury in the High Court. Green still couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer. The state appointed Attorney-at-Law Peter Hugh to
represent him.
In his testimony, Joseph Cummings, who had lived next door to the couple, told the court that on hearing loud screams coming from the apartment, he peered through a window and saw someone leaving the residence. Cummings said that he subsequently learnt the suspect’s name was Troy Green.
Under cross-examination by defence attorney Peter Hugh, Cummings said that he could not recall exactly what the suspect was wearing, since the incident had left him traumatized.
Cummings nonetheless maintained that he saw the man coming down the stairs which led to Bibi Saymar’s apartment, since there was nothing to block his line of vision. He also said that lights affixed to various parts of the building gave him a clear view of the suspect.
Cummings said that he was certain that Green, the accused, was the person whom he had seen leaving the murdered woman’s apartment. The witness recounted that Saymar’s husband, Dennis Persaud, arrived sometime after the police, but “took his time to park his vehicle and go upstairs.”
Another witness, Shereena Madramootoo, said that when Saymar’s reputed husband arrived, she related to him what had happened, but the man took a long time before he ventured upstairs to check on his wife.
Madramootoo said that when she went upstairs, she found her neighbour lying in a pool of blood. She said that the woman was still conscious and had responded to her, but her husband hardly seemed concerned about his wife’s condition.
“He was just shaking his head and walking up and down the house and telling the police that the house get rob and he lost a lot of stuff.”
One of the main state witnesses was Detective Sergeant Paul Wintz, who was stationed at the Leonora Police Station at the time of the murder. He recalled that he obtained a statement from Troy Green after cautioning him in accordance with the law.
Wintz said that no form of inducement or force was used against the accused while obtaining the statement. Reading the statement in court, Wintz said that Green had told police investigators that he was paid US$1,500 to
kill the hairdresser.
In his caution statement, Green identified the victim’s husband, whom he said he had known for five months, and another man, as also being a part of the plan. The other man implicated in the crime was identified as Shane Simon, whom the accused said transported him to and from Bibi Saymar’s home.
Green said that Simon had picked him up from the East La Penitence area and transported him to Hague, West Coast Demerara.
According to the statement, Dennis Persaud called Green on his cell phone and offered him US$1,500 to go to his home with Shane Simon. Simon allegedly picked Green up in a white car and took him to Persaud’s home, where Green “stab up Persaud’s wife several times.”
According to the detective, Green said that after committing the act, he placed a knife and sheet in the trunk of the vehicle, which brought him back to Georgetown.
The witness said that he subsequently held a confrontation with the accused and the two men. According to Wintz, during the confrontation the victim’s husband admitted to paying Green some money, but said that he did not tell the accused to kill his wife. Simon, however, denied transporting the accused to the home of the murdered businesswoman.
Green’s state-appointed attorney, Peter Hugh, had tried to have the statement disallowed, on the grounds that his client was beaten to sign the confession.
Despite that confession, and an eyewitness placing him at the scene, on January 23, 2015, the jury unanimously found Troy Green not guilty of the murder of Bibi Rafeena Saymar. Justice Navindra Singh informed Green that he was free to go. Green uttered a quiet ‘thank you, Sir’ and hastily left the courtroom.
In the end, without the alleged mastermind, and with just a confession statement, there just wasn’t enough to make the murder accusation stick.
Writing this story now, sure in my heart that I know who carried out and orchestrated that foul deed five years ago; I can’t help hoping that Bibi Rafeena Saymar’s screams haunt her killers till judgment time…
If you have information about an unusual case, you can contact Kaieteur News at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown location. We can be reached on telephone numbers 225-8458, 225-8465, 225-8473 or 225-8491. You need not disclose your identity.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address: [email protected]
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