Jamaican mom left note in NYC fatal fire

AP and PAUL HENRY

Monday, July 26, 2010

POLICE believe a Jamaican mother who died in a suspected murder-suicide and arson in her New York City home penned a badly charred, fragmented note with the words “am sorry”.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said yesterday that the note's handwriting matched a diary also found in the Staten Island apartment. He said police believe both were written by Leisa Jones.

Investigators had described Jones' 14-year-old son Romoy Ceejay Raymond as a suspect because he had a history of playing with fire.

But they haven't ruled out his mother.

The bodies of Jones, Raymond, and two young daughters — their throats slit — were found early Thursday during a fire at the home. Raymond had a razor under his body.

A fourth child, a two-year-old boy, died at the hospital.

The 14-year-old’s father, Earlston Raymond, has maintained that his son — who was initially fingered as the main suspect — could not have committed the crime.

Raymond, who spoke with the Observer from his home in St Andrew Saturday, said if he could turn back the hands of time, his only son would have been here with him in Jamaica, instead of a morgue somewhere in New York.

Raymond, a 39-year-old mechanic, told the Observer while sitting limp in an unfinished section of his house in Red Hills, St Andrew, that on numerous occasions the teen would complain to him about the way he was being treated by his 33-year-old mother.

He said he would ask Jones to send home his son, who had been in the US for over six years, but she wouldn’t.

“I use to tell her to send home the youth because I’m a tradesman and he can learn a skill,” said Raymond. “But she wouldn’t send him. She would spank him and take away his phone.”

He said too that his son wanted to move back home.

“Boy, it hurt me fi know how de youth just dead so,” said Raymond.

Raymond told the Observer that his son was not guilty and instead charged that the only likely suspect, in his eyes, would have been Jones because her “temper was too high”.

He said a friend in New York told him, following the tragedy, that Jones had on previous occasions threatened to kill the children and "burn down the house".

With an expression of bewilderment and grief etched on his face, Raymond said his son loved his siblings and that he was an even-tempered youth who was not easily upset.

In contrast, Raymond described Jones as a violent woman and said that their relationship did not last because of her quick-tempered nature.

Now Raymond has only one desire, which he did not hesitate to share.

“Regardless of my son being dead and gone, I just want them to clear his name,” he said.

Undigested pills found in suspected killer C.J. Jones' stomach; handwriting in note could be mom's

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Jamaican mom left note in NYC fatal fire