Beheading Case | Witness details jailhouse confession by murder accused
Published:Thursday | November 14, 2019 | 12:00 AM
Livern Barrett, Senior Staff Reporter
A witness today recounted a jailhouse conversation in which an accused killer detailed how he and his cronies shot, chopped then beheaded a St Catherine woman and her teenage daughter.
The witness was giving evidence in the murder trial of Sanja Ducally and Kemar Riley in the Home Circuit this morning.
They are accused of killing Charmaine Cover-Rattray, 40, and her 18-year-old daughter, Joeith Lynch in Lauriston, St Catherine on July 20, 2011.
The court has ordered that the witness' name should not be published.
The witness gave evidence that days after the killings he was in custody at the Spanish Town Police Station when Riley, whom he also knew as ‘Blacks’, was brought there “hopping.”
He said on July 27 he went to Riley and asked “A wah really gwaan?".
The witness said Riley told him that Cover-Rattray and Lynch had “Labourite family" from Tredegar Park, a nearby community, who “dem programme” to go to Lauriston and kill another man, whom he identified as 'Scott'.
As a result, the witness said Riley revealed that he, 'Adrian' and 'Wormy' moved in on the mother and the daughter.
Adrian Campbell avoided a trial when he pleaded guilty to non-capital murder for the killings.
The witness said Riley recounted how he and the three men kicked in the door to the women’s house and entered Lynch’s room.
“He said him hold on pan the girl and Wormy a chop the girl. Him say the girl call out Wormy right name and say ‘you a go kill me’,” the witness recounted.
“He said he had to move Wormy out the way and shoot her because she did a bawl out too loud,” the witness said of their jailhouse conversation.
According to the witness, Riley told him that “Adrian dem programme the mother round the next room”, using the street slang for a killing.
“Him say dem did haffi cut off the daughter head same time Adrian inna the other room a cut off the mother head,” the witness continued.
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