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Feb 19, 2017 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery
By Michael Jordan
Phillip Bess’ youngest daughter was walking near the Stabroek Market last January when she spotted one of the men that she believes killed her father twelve years ago.
Though he had worn a cap back then, she says she recognized him at once; a tall, slim, man with dark, narrow features. And he was still flashing a gold tooth.
Her heart was racing, but she wanted to be certain, so she passed him thrice more. After the third time, she headed to the nearest police outpost…
It was just beginning to rain that evening of Saturday, October 30, 2004, when the five men entered Phillip Bess’s yard in Stevedore Housing Scheme squatting area.
Bess, a 41-year-old driver 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’ daughter realised that sheltering was not what 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.
The young woman darted out of the yard and fled to a neighbour’s residence.
Meanwhile, inside the house, Phillip Bess had just finished his dinner of fish and chips which his wife had prepared shortly after returning from church.
It was around six thirty p.m. and Cheryl was in the bedroom shutting the windows when she heard Philip yell out from in 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 durag that partly covered his corn-row plaits.
The gunman pointed his weapon at her husband, while his companion with the durag advanced menacingly to Cheryl Bess.
“Where de money deh?” he shouted at her.
“We ain’ got money, we just hustling,” Cheryl pleaded.
“Shut yuh mouth,” the bandit snapped. “Where 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 hay,” the man guarding Cheryl said.
A loud explosion filled the house. Cheryl looked behind her and saw Philip lying on the floor with a bullet-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 gold chains, 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 over the money 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 family were the victims of two vicious robbers. But Cheryl Bess suspected that there was more to it than that.
The couple had gone through some recent domestic problems after Cheryl found out that Philip was having an affair. Phillip 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 the 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 Phillip, 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 Phillip’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 says that the family suffered financially and emotionally from her husband’s murder.
She was forced to close the shop and sell their recently-bought car.
Mrs. Bess says that she occasionally saw her husband’s killer 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 has an ‘open-face’ gold tooth.
Then, last January, Mrs. Bess’ youngest daughter allegedly spotted the same slim, gold-toothed suspect standing “under the clock” near the Stabroek Market.
“From the time I see him I recognized him,” she told me. “He hadn’t changed much. He just get old. I didn’t know what to do. I passed him three or four times, then I want to the Stabroek Market Police Outpost.”
A police rank accompanied her to the area and took the suspect into custody. He was then taken to the Brickdam Police Station, where a senior CID officer listened to the allegations. The officer allegedly took the woman’s name and phone number and promised to get contact them.
But after receiving no word from the official, Mr. Bess’s daughter said that the family filed a report with the Police Complaints Authority. They were allegedly told that the police were unable to locate statements that the family had provided in 2014. A file was reportedly submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who allegedly ruled that there was insufficient evidence to charge the suspect.
The alleged gunman is once again walking free, but the Bess family is still determined to have justice.
“We are asking for him to be re-arrested and placed before the courts,” the daughter said last week, adding that they are also asking Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan to intervene.
If you have any further information on these cases 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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