A 24-year-old labourer of St Catherine was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment in the Home Circuit Court for the double murder of Jamaica Dairy Farmers Federation (JDFF) executives Fred Anderson, 70, and David Turner, 74, in 2002.

Convict Richard Hamilton, a resident of Old Harbour, was scolded by Justice Carol Beswick for the heinous murders he committed while only a 19-year-old, before being sentenced to 40 years to life on each count of murder.

Hamilton, a father of two children, will be considered for parole after serving 40 years. The sentences are likely to run concurrently.

The court was told that around 2:30 pm on March 26, 2002, Hamilton and three other men went to Anderson’s Longville Park home in Clarendon and asked the dairy farmer, who was a justice of the peace, to sign a document.

The court was told that while Anderson, a former vice-chairman of the JDFF, was in the process of signing the document, two men pulled guns and proceeded to rob him of his .38 Smith and Wesson firearm, a number of ammunition and $90,000.

The men then opened fire hitting Anderson and Turner, the JDFF’s financial controller at the time. Turner, a former public relations director for the Jamaica Musical Theatre Company, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Anderson died a day later.

Hamilton was held a few hours after the incident in an area known as ‘Africa’ in Old Harbour.

In an unsworn statement in court Hamilton maintained his innocence, even after the court was told he had admitted to the police under caution that gunmen had forced him to accompany them to the premises where the murder took place.

The defence argued that Hamilton, who successfully sat an exam to earn a place at the Vere Technical High School, could not read or write and so was unable to tell what he was signing at the police station.