MORE than a year after the brutal slaying of Swiss University of the West Indies (UWI) lecturer, Peter Vogel, police are still baffled about the location of the two main suspects in his murder.

A day after 60-year-old Vogel was found strangled at his home at College Common, Mona, his live-in helper Yanika Scott and her boyfriend, Kevin Downer, were named as persons of interest in the incident. Scott and Downer, according to Head of Operation Kingfish, Superintendent Dean Taylor, were believed to have been alone with Vogel on the night of his killing.

But both, who are of Kingston addresses, have managed to elude police efforts to nab them in several parishes across the island, causing a hold-up in the resolution of the case.

“They are who we want to find now. They are holding up this case,” Taylor said during an interview at Operation Kingfish headquarters last Thursday.

“We have made several efforts to locate them in parishes across the island, but still we have not been fruitful. It appears they relocate every time the police move on information about their whereabouts,” Taylor said.

According to Taylor, the police have combed sections of Manchester, Westmoreland, Catherine Hall in St James and in communities such as Maxfield Avenue, Trench Town and Rosseau Road in the Corporate Area, where both suspects are said to frequent. Wanted notices for the two have also been placed in newspapers and through the electronic media.

Scott, Taylor said, is suspected to be under the directions of Downer – her high school boyfriend from Anchovy High in Montego Bay – and is the man they suspect orchestrated Vogel’s death.

“We believe they are moving together, Downer would have had some influence over her. We know that he went there to look for her on the night of the killing and we believe that he was the one that killed Vogel. I don’t think he would have let her out of his sight,” Taylor said, “We have made contacts with both their families and their schools, nobody can give any information as to their whereabouts. All we can do right now is to just keep asking for the assistance of the public in locating them.”

Vogel’s missing green Suzuki Grand Vitara, a television set and other electrical items led cops to believe that robbery was the motive for his death. The vehicle was, however, found abandoned along Beechwood Avenue the following day.

Vogel, a professor, was involved extensively with biodiversity projects, and was an executive member of BirdLife Jamaica, the Jamaica Iguana Research and Conservation Group and the Game Bird Research Committee.