THE sudden and mysterious death on November 29, 1988 of Dr Aubrey Fraser, director of legal education in the Council of Legal Education in Jamaica and a retired Judge of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago, reverberated not only across Jamaica but the wider Caribbean as well.

Guyana-born Dr Fraser, at the time of his death, was a man in the news as he had been in the midst of chairing a Commission of Enquiry into a much-publicised accident at the Jamaica Flour Mills in Kingston.

In the wee hours of that November morning, Fraser’s wife of 36 years, Aileen Fraser, telephoned her next-door neighbour, Dr John Martin, a medical doctor and the then Custos Rotulorum for the parish of St Andrew, to say: “Dr John, Aubrey is clammy and cold and I can’t manage him, could you come over and help me?”

Dr Martin told a Circuit Court jury later he thought his neighbour had suffered a heart attack, so he rushed next door within two to three minutes. He was met at the bedroom door by Aileen Fraser, who told him: “Sorry, John. Aubrey passed.”

Martin entered the room where he said he “saw Aubrey flat on his back, his arms crossed in ‘sweet repose'”. He instantly suspected foul play and telephoned the commissioner of police.

Investigations into this mysterious death led to a Coroner’s Inquest held in June 1991 when a Coroner’s jury under the guidance of Resident Magistrate M Dukaran (now Judge of Appeal) held that Dr Fraser’s wife, Aileen, a 69-year-old social worker, and the couple’s daughter, Allison Fraser-Hunt, and son, Rowan, should be charged with murder.

The trial lasted 19 days in the No 1 Home Circuit Court before Justice Lensley Wolfe, OJ (now retired chief justice of Jamaica) and a jury. Director of Public Prosecutions Glen Andrade, QC, (now deceased) presented the case for the prosecution. Frank Phipps, QC and Wentworth Charles appeared for Rowan Fraser. Dennis Daly, QC appeared for Aileen Fraser, and Allison Fraser-Hunt was defended by Richard Small.

At the end of the trial, the jury acquitted Allison Fraser-Hunt of her father’s murder and discharged her. But her mother and brother were convicted and sentenced to death. They appealed the verdict and in the local Court of Appeal, by a majority decision — 2 to 1 — the convictions were quashed and the two acquitted.

Dissenting Justice U D Gordon (now deceased) had classified the convictions as non-capital murder and recommended that they should not be considered for parole until each had served a sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment. But the majority ruled and they were set free.

While it lasted, Jamaicans were glued to the case. Dr Aubrey Fraser, as director of legal education in Jamaica, had been responsible for the development of the Norman Manley Law School here and the Sir Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago, from which latter position he had retired.

Along with Allison and Rowan, the couple had three other children, two of whom were resident abroad when the death occurred. The fifth child, Stuart, who lived in the family home at 1 Sunset Avenue, Jack’s Hill in St Andrew, gave evidence for the prosecution.

It was his testimony that the day prior to the murder had been his birthday. He had driven his mother home from work at the University of the West Indies on the afternoon of November 29, 1988 and had prepared chicken soup for the family dinner.

When he left the home near 7:00 pm, his parents and brother, Rowan, were in the house. His father was wearing a dressing gown but was not dressed for bed. His mother was in the kitchen and Rowan was taking a bath in his bathroom.

Immediately before he left, the witness said, he saw his brother Rowan going into his father’s bedroom. A friend of Stuart’s — David Silvera — who was there that evening, left the home with Stuart. According to Stuart, they went to the home of another friend, Peter Daley. They had intended to celebrate the birthday over drinks.

But sometime later, having bought chips and chasers for the drinks, they decided to return to 1 Sunset Avenue, the home of the Frasers. They arrived there about 10:00 pm and were let in by Mrs Fraser. They had drinks and celebrated while Mrs Fraser worked in the dining room.

About 10:30 pm, Stuart recalled, his mother came to where he and his friends were on the verandah and said that she “just came from my father’s room, had to look around the door and could see his head covered and she said that she is sure that he was trying a new form of yoga”. Stuart did not bother to investigate because, he explained, his father practised yoga from time to time.

Between 12:30 am and 1:00 am, the witness further deponed, his mother returned to the verandah to tell his friends goodnight. Then about a minute later she came back to ask the visitors to leave, because according to Daley — one of his friends — her husband “was not feeling well”.

At that point, Stuart added, his mother appeared disturbed. He went to the master bedroom shared by his parents and asked: “Aubrey? What is wrong?” But he got no response. He checked his father’s pulse and felt nothing. His father, he realised, was dead.

He noted that the upper part of his father’s body had been clothed in a grey sweatsuit which he wore as pyjamas when he was cold. The lower body was covered with a blanket. A towel was lying across the top of his head and one on his chest. There was a drop of blood on his nose and some splashes on his upper chest.

Continuing his testimony, Stuart told the court, he asked his friends to leave and they did so. He then applied artificial respiration to his father, to no avail. Then his mother called Dr Martin, their neighbour, and he went to escort him into the house because of the dogs.

Dr Martin, Stuart said, examined the body, then exclaimed: “Boy, he is gone.”

In his testimony, Dr Martin said he received the call about 12:50 am, and he got there within two to three minutes.

He examined the body and concluded that Aubrey Fraser was dead. Blood got on his hand during the process so he went into the bathroom to wash it off. Inside the bathroom, adjoining the master bedroom, he noticed that the toilet tank cover was missing. He picked up a phone in the bedroom to call the police but the phone was dead. He was directed to another bedroom from which he called the police commissioner.

Dr Martin told the judge and jury that he had been informed that the missing tank cover had been found on the bed in another room usually occupied by Allison Fraser.

On being shown the toilet tank cover, the doctor stated that it was his opinion it could have been used to inflict the injury he saw to the head of the deceased. It would have required a fairly great degree of force to inflict that injury.

Dr Fraser, he added, was a big man — approximately six feet two inches and weighing between 235 and 245 lbs. So he would have been expected to put up some sort of struggle. He described the head wound as severe and told the court: “The minute I saw foul play, it was now in the hands of the police and the government forensic medical doctor. I came over as a friend to see a sick patient.”

Based on the evidence of rigor mortis — stiffness of the neck — he saw in the body of Dr Fraser, Dr Martin estimated the time of death as between 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm. He admitted his examination was purely clinical.

The government pathologist, Dr Ramesh Bhatt, who conducted a post-mortem on the body of Dr Fraser, described the wounds he found externally:

1. a) seven superficial circular wounds each about 1/8th inch in diameter between the second and third intercostal spaces in the mid-clavicular line… from the midline of the body.

b) two smaller wounds one inch lateral to those wounds.

All these wounds were seen to pass through skin and subcutaneous tissues to a depth of 1/8th of an inch. There was no blood but oozing of tissue fluids. It was Dr Bhatt’s opinion that the wounds could have been inflicted a “few minutes just before or after death”.

2. eleven stab wounds… on the left side of the neck in an area one-inch in diameter

3. two circular stab wounds… just below the left ear.

Continuing his evidence, the doctor related that the 11 stab wounds to the left side of the neck ‘were seen to pass through muscles and blood vessels of the neck. One of the wounds was seen to pass through thyroid cartilage and another through trachea one inch below thyroid cartilage. The wounds ranged from half inch to two inches in depth’.

The two circular stab wounds below the left ear passed through the muscles of the neck and entered the oral cavity. They were of depth more than two inches. The doctor told the court that the scalp showed contusion on the frontal region and there were multiple fractures of the frontal bone.

In his opinion, Dr Bhatt said, death was due to shock and haemorrhage as a result of injuries to the head and multiple stab wounds to the neck. The flat side of the toilet tank cover exhibited in court, wielded with a moderate degree of force, could have caused the injuries to the head. An injury to the head with that, he added, “may render the victim… instantaneously unconscious” and could have caused death “within minutes…”

The injuries to the neck, the pathologist opined, could have been caused by either of two paper knives exhibited in court. As to the injuries to the chest, it was the view of the witness that the “injuries… may explain the status, the mental status of the assailant at that time… it might show that the assailant was too furious or broken down emotionally.”

He put the estimated time of death as between 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm.

The government forensic analyst, Yvonne Cruickshank, who had visited the crime scene, told the court of her observations. She noted that the body of the deceased was on the southern bed in the master bedroom and there was a brown bath towel on the bed with blood present in brown smudges. All locks and bolts to doors and windows seemed intact.

Blood was present in small brown droplets on the pillow. She expected blood on the wall or even the bed-head or bed-side table but there was none. There was no sign of things being tossed about in the room.

Cruickshank said the position of the body seemed unusual to her. She noticed also that the sweat shirt on the body had no cuts or openings and the absence of those suggested to her that when the deceased was injured, he was not wearing the sweat shirt; the smudging on the inside of the sweat shirt suggested to her that the smudge occurred while the garment was being put on or taken off. She did not see the injuries to Dr Fraser’s chest. But she saw and examined the letter openers exhibited; she found no blood.

Inside the bathroom adjoining the master bedroom she saw shoe prints in the shower stall appearing to be that of a track shoe. In this bedroom the toilet tank cover was missing.

In her opinion, assuming that the deceased had a meal at 6:30 pm and undigested food was found in the stomach; and the post-mortem was done the following day at 1:30 pm, the meal, if light, would be digested within two hours; if heavy, within three hours. That being so, in her further opinion, death would have occurred before 9:00 pm.

Assistant Commissioner Daniel Wray (now retired) who was at the murder scene with a team of detectives by 1:40 am that ill-fated morning, testified at the trial that he observed that there were four windows in the master bedroom; two on the north and two southerly.

The latter two were closed and the other two windows were open with glass panes pushed up and with a burglar bar across the top.

There was no evidence that the windows were forced. There was no evidence of a struggle in the master bedroom or of ransacking. A toilet tank cover was on a bed in a room adjoining the master bedroom. In the top drawer of a chest of drawers in a closet in that bedroom he found a wallet and keys which, he was told, belonged to Dr Fraser.

Under the window to the north, the witness told the Court, he found streaks of brown dirt. In a room across the passage from a bedroom beside the master bedroom, he saw a black telephone with the wire cut.

Next week: Mrs Fraser’s testimony – “I did not kill my husband… Nor did any of my children”

Sybil E Hibbert is a retired court reporting specialist. She is also the wife of Retired ACP Isadore ‘Dick’ Hibbert. Send your comments to allend@jamaicaobserver.com