St Ann woman pleads guilty to 2013 murder

Thirty-five-year-old Dianna Pinnock of Epworth, St Ann, is to be sentenced in the St Ann Parish Court on November 16 after pleading guilty to the November 2013 murder of retired postmistress, 63-year-old Nathlee Hamilton in Beecher Town, St Ann.

Pinnock also pleaded guilty to the charge of child stealing, after Hamilton’s six-week-old grandchild was snatched from her before she was stabbed several times and left for dead at her home that night.

The baby was later found alive in a bag in Bonham Spring, near Exchange in St Ann.

Pinnock was subsequently detained by the police and charged a week later with murder, abduction, and burglary. Information reaching The Gleaner is that she has already served three years for the lesser charge of burglary and has been out on bail on the other charges.

After the November 11, 2013 murder and abduction in Beecher Town, the police had revealed that Pinnock was charged earlier that year for a similar case of abduction, involving a one-week-old baby in St Mary. That baby was found two days later in Ocho Rios.

The Beecher Town case has been called up several times over the years and put off. On October 30, 2023, when the case was again called up, Pinnock was bound over to return to court the following day.

‘Brought back every feelin’

Members of Hamilton’s family, who gathered inside the courtroom the next morning, were relieved when Pinnock, who was 25 at the time of the incident, pleaded guilty to the charges of murder and child stealing. She will be sentenced next Thursday.

“The family feels that although justice was delayed, it was not denied,” a sister of the deceased told The Gleaner. “It brought back every feeling to us. We felt like it had just happened, and some of us cried.”

Hamilton’s murder sent shockwaves across the parish and even overseas, as she was a well-known figure who served as postmistress in Beecher Town for many years. She was also a Baptist deaconess and mother of popular Ocho Rios figure Stacey-Ann Ellis, also known as ‘Shabba’, whose baby was the victim.

Councillor for the Beecher Town Division, Ian Bell, at the time called for the death penalty for murderers in light of the incident.

Fay Grocia, president of the overseas-based Beecher Town Give Back Association, expressed condolences to the family shortly after the incident.