IT was as though the heavens wept that Thursday night, sounding an ominous warning of things to come.

The rain was the perfect foil for nearly a dozen men crammed in a tiny pub in Kilancholly, St Mary, to watch a cricket match between Pakistan and the West Indies.

But it was not the scores which made the night – which will perhaps haunt them forever – memorable. It was the fact that 34-year-old Jeffery Perry had watched and cheered along with them, before slinking out into the wet, dark night to slaughter his three cousins – Shadice Williams, 4; Dwayne Davidson, 15; and Suann Gordon, 13. A few metres down the road, the children’s mother was attending a church service, blissfully unaware that her world was about to crumble.

After murdering the children, Perry returned to the pub to give the ‘cricket fans’ the gruesome news. He wept pretentiously as he spun his tale of how he had found the children slaughtered.

As if in testament to that rainy night, it began drizzling yesterday as the Sunday Observer returned to the very pub Perry had left that fateful day on January 28, 2005 to murder his three young cousins. On Friday, Perry was sentenced to hang for the murders and the community was still in a jubilant mood.

Some of the 2005 ‘cricket fans’ were in the pub, but this time they were paying dominoes, enjoying an early morning smoke and holding a grand jury of their own. They were happy with Friday’s verdict.

“Wi feel bad bout it. A heng him did fi heng instant. Wi juss a seh di judge shoulda order instant henging. Him nuffi si nutten name sunlight,” the owner of the shop told the Sunday Observer.

“Wi sorry dem nevah carry him come meck wi kill him. Dem shoulda meck wi torture him. Wi woulda teck out him fingernail today an him toenail tomorrow,” he continued.

“Di night him was here wid wi watching a match between Pakistan and West Indies. An then him lef, ‘an wi nevah know seh a dat him gone do. A him come back come tell wi wah happen and him a cry more dan di parents dem,” another chimed in.

The men said if Perry had not confessed, they would to this day be clueless as he had returned to the murder scene and even helped to put the children in the vehicle that took them to hospital.

“It happen a Thursday night, wi can’t forget that Thursday night, rain did a fall to,” another said.

“Him really suprise most of di man dem inna di district, him nuh deserve fi live; if a him relative him do so den what him would do wi,” he continued.

In fact, most residents in Kilancholly district, nestled in the verdant hills of St Mary, were in favour of the death by hanging sentence handed down on Friday, enough even though they had never imagined that one of their own would be the first to be sentenced to death after Parliament voted late last year to retain the death penalty.

So happy were they with Friday’s judgement, that they clanged pot covers and celebrated inside the community. At the same time, they noted that the magnitude of Perry’s crime was not only too much but also too close for comfort.

“Him shoulda sentence from long time, a shoulda last night him hang, or today,” Sylvia Bailey, the children’s aunt, told the Sunday Observer from her backyard, where she can look out at the graves of the three children located a few metres from her house.

Speaking in low, pained tones, Bailey said Perry gave no indication he harboured ‘such wicked thoughts’. His act, Bailey said, had changed the community forever; driving her sister Sonia, the mother of the children, to St Ann to live pursued by memories of that night nearly four years ago.

Sonia, who spoke to the Sunday Observer by phone, said she had missed all the newscasts reporting the verdict, but said she was satisfied with the decision.

“He deserves death, he has killed innocent people, so why not?”

“It is painful. Today I would have a 20-year-old son and an 18-year-old daughter,” she added, noting that only one of her children – her then two-year-old son – had escaped Perry’s onslaught.

“He talks about it,” she said, although she is unsure if it is from his own memories or from what he has been told.

“He (Perry) looks innocent but he will kill anybody, they should not let him escape,” she said firmly.

For Junior, a carpenter from that district, rage is still simmering.

“That pretty devil? That pretty devil you talking bout? I was a friend of Dwayne (15-year-old boy), the youth father an mi a family. Di community don’t want him (Perry) get no leniency because what him do was cruel,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Junior has an even closer relationship with that night.

“Right now is the same house (where the murders occurred) mi live, di blood still on the walls,” he said. “Mi hear seh him ago appeal the verdict, but appeal the verdict an’ do what? What yuh sow you reap. If him come back here him dead,” Junior said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Just metres away another resident, who gave his name as Stella, told the Sunday Observer that even though he became a member of the community just three months ago he had formed his opinion.

“Mi a stranger an mi come an hear, but man like dat fi dead. Look how him kill him own family dat him eat an drink with. If dem start hanging a mawnin a fi him neck fuss fi pap ’cause if him come back yah him dead. When mi hear yessideh, a pure joy. A pure pot covah yu hear roun yah,” added Stella, who is ironically also a tenant of the death house.

Scores of other residents expressed similar sentiments.

“Wi get justice; him kill the likkle youth them,” said one male resident who did not wish to be named. According to the man, Perry had an uncanny preference for the company of youngsters, especially girls. He claimed that Perry had even molested a female member of his family, but said it was covered up by his relatives.

He also said it was not the first time Perry had killed, but said this had also been disputed by family members. This time, however, he said the truth had surfaced as told by Perry, who confessed that on the night in question he stripped down to his underpants and socks and entered the children’s home through a window while they slept and hacked them to death.

Overtime, it seems the residents of the little hilltop district might even have spun their own legends of the man they said was always neatly dressed and to all intents and purposes appeared sane.

“Him always have someting inna a bottle a sip, mi nuh know if a blood. A pure horror movie him watch, an him have some whole heap a book weh him did a read,” one man said above the buzz of conversation which took over the little board building.

It was six against one.

Six argued that the man who had undergone several psychiatric assessments was neither mad nor unfit to plead as his lawyers had at one time said, while one man claimed that Perry’s unstable mental condition was hereditary.

“Him evil,” another countered, adding, “di man a serial killer, di man nuh no mad man”.

While they could find no agreement on that matter, all agreed that Perry should hang; and soon.