Earl Pratt talks on his cellphone after his release on parole from the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre yesterday. (Photo: Lionel Rookwood)

Earl Pratt and Mary Lynch were yesterday released from prison, just over an hour apart, in dramatic scenes that again turned national spotlight on both convicted murderers who served a combined 44 years at two of the island's maximum security prisons.

"Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus, hallelujah!" Lynch shouted as she walked from the Fort Augusta women's prison in St Catherine at about 2:22 pm into the waiting arms of her sisters Hope and Maureen Doyley.

Earlier, at approximately 12:55 pm, in another section of St Catherine, Pratt celebrated his release from the Spanish Town Adult Correctional facility by thanking the Almighty and expressing remorse for the murder that got him there.

Mary Lynch walks triumphantly out of the Fort Augusta Adult Correctional Centre after being released on parole yesterday. (Photo: Bryan Cummings)

"I give God thanks for this opportunity and I must say condolence to the family of the man I was charged with killing," Pratt said. "I feel very sad about what happened 30 years ago."

Pratt was just 18 when he and his friend Ivan Morgan were arrested for the murder of businessman Junior Anthony Missick in 1977. Both men were sentenced to death in 1979.
However, in 1994 their sentences were commuted to life by the Privy Council in a landmark ruling that made it illegal for persons on death row for more than five years to be executed.

Morgan eventually died of natural causes in prison.
Yesterday 48-year-old Pratt, nattily dressed in a three-piece brown suit, matching felt hat with dark glasses and designer shoes, was unable to mask his relief at being freed after spending 30 years behind the high walls of the prison.

During that time, Jamaica has seen the change of three prime ministers and the slide of its dollar from $1.77 to $68.00 to the US, as well as the replacing of telegrams with e-mail and other cyber-age forms of sending messages.
Yesterday, Pratt, who will be living with friends in one of the older developments in uptown Kingston, was grateful to his victim's family who, he said, played a role in his being granted parole.

A sea of people, including a large group of women waiting to visit other inmates, crowded around the now famous ex-prisoner they had heard of and read about in newspapers. Some of the women said Pratt was looking good.

Pratt managed to greet waiting friends, while speaking to reporters and holding a conversation with a caller from overseas on his cellular phone. "I'm outside the prison gate now," an elated Pratt told the caller.

He eventually left the prison gate in a white Toyota Liteace mini van.

Unlike Pratt, Lynch did not speak with journalists. However, as she hugged her sisters, she said "Hallelujah! Fourteen years is a long time. I am so grateful that the Lord has kept me and my mother Lilith Doyley, who is 82 years old."

She was then ushered into a waiting white Toyota Corolla station wagon, which had its licence plates removed. The car then sped away.

"I think she just wants to get out of here and start living her life all over again, I mean 14 years is a long time. But she is looking excellent and I'm very happy for her," Lynch's friend, Lorraine Clunis, told the Observer.

Earlier in the day, Lynch's fellow inmates, apparently overjoyed at her planned release, shouted "freedom" amid clapping and cheering. Several of the women could be seen jumping and waving inside the prison.

Apostolic minister G G Cooper told the Observer outside the prison that he would be holding a special prayer meeting for Lynch following her release.

Lynch rose to prominence in May 1992 after being charged with the gruesome murder of her husband Leary, who was, at the time, the divisional general manager for credit at National Commercial Bank.

The banker was chopped to death at the couple's Cherry Gardens home, allegedly receiving 25 wounds to the skull. His body was found in a remote area of Smokey Vale sometime later.

Lynch initially denied committing the murder, but during the lengthy trial in 1994 she eventually testified in lurid detail to killing her husband. She told the court that she chopped her husband in self-defence after he attacked her with a machete. She said that she struggled with him, got hold of the machete and began swinging it at his head, chopping him several times all over his head.

Lynch said he kept fighting her, and at one point she blacked out. When she regained consciousness, she eased herself from under her husband and ran.

She said she later dragged the body from the master bedroom to the carport, where she put the body into the trunk of a white Volvo motor car and drove around until she ended up in the hills. She backed up the car into a narrow dirt road, took out the body, poured gas oil and newspapers on the body and lit it afire.

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