DEEJAY Captain Barkey and Tracy Bennett had a five-year relationship which started after they met at a show in her native St Elizabeth, the slain entertainer's friend and performing partner Wickerman said yesterday.

Wickerman, whose real name is David Taylor, also told the Jamaica Observer that Barkey (real name Wayne Hamilton) had told him this year that the man suspected of murdering the couple, Joseph Kernizan, had followed them in his car and threatened them in New York.

"Mi tell him, 'Barkey, leggo dem ting dey, 'cause the man an' woman ting nuh easy'," Taylor said yesterday, adding that he last spoke to Hamilton last Thursday.

Hamilton, 50, and Bennett, 38, were gunned down in the parking lot of the Holiday Motel in Bronx, New York, around 3:10 am Saturday.

On Sunday, New York police named 42-year-old Kernizan as the suspect in the double murder and said they had video footage of him outside the motel.

Bennett, a registered nurse at Winthrop Hospital in Long Island, was estranged from Kernizan, her Haitian husband.

On Sunday, Lieutenant John Grimpel of the New York Police confirmed to the Observer that Bennett had obtained a restraining order on Kernizan. He also confirmed that the couple had "two children in common".

Witnesses said that Bennett begged for her life before she was shot. Hamilton was shot dead moments before.

Yesterday, the New York Post reported that the police were focusing their search for Kernizan — who is 5-feet 5-inches and weighs 220 pounds — on Long Island, where he has family.

Hamilton, who lived in Milwaukee, is survived by his wife Pauline and eight children (none by his wife).

Yesterday, Wickerman said that he and Hamilton were scheduled to perform on December 22 at show in Morant Bay.