A policeman befriended his lover’s husband then choked him to death

ROMANTIC love usually happens between two persons, but sometimes when a third person enters the equation, death itself can be the ultimate price.

In March 1975, a 27-year-old constable, Sydney Campbell, then attached to the Police Traffic Department, faced the No 1 Home Circuit Court and was sentenced to death for murdering the husband of his former lover.

Campbell was said to have garrotted him with an electric cord as the cuckholded husband sat by an open window in his living room watching television.

The policeman was condemned to death not once, but twice, in two different trials for the same murder following appeals. He was to pay the supreme penalty by hanging on the gallows of the St Catherine District Prison at Spanish Town on the morning of Tuesday, March 16, 1982, coincidentally, the final year of hanging in Jamaica. The case for the prosecution was presented by the late Martin L Wright, QC (later Judge of Appeal) and Crown Counsel Maurice Reckord (later puisne judge, now retired).

Campbell, whose defence was an alibi, was defended by Berthan Macaulay, QC, and attorney-at-law Keith St Bernard (both deceased).

The judge and jury had heard evidence over nine days as to how, on the night of May 18, 1974, the victim, 41-year-old Richard Mills, proprietor of the Seven Seas Restaurant at Half-Way-Tree in St Andrew, had let out what was described as a “terrible choking scream”, which attracted not only the family’s household helper but several neighbours.

Shortly after, according to the prosecution, a man wearing dark clothes and a pair of black leather gloves was seen by a witness carrying Mills’ limp body to his car which was parked in the yard at Woodhaven Avenue, Arlene Gardens, Kingston 10. That man, the prosecution charged, was none other than Sydney Campbell, one sworn to uphold the law, to serve and to protect.

The prosecution further alleged that it was Campbell who placed Mills to sit in the front seat of the motor car and subsequently fled after he failed to start the car and the neighbour’s suspicions were aroused.

The prosecution would show also that Campbell, who had been in the police force for seven years, had first become a regular customer of the Seven Seas Restaurant in Half-Way-Tree, then a close friend of the proprietors; the deceased man and his wife.

In the first trial before the late Justice V C Melville, J Celestine Mills, the Bermuda-born wife of the dead man, testified that she had met Campbell in late 1972 at the restaurant she had operated jointly with her husband. They became very friendly and he even assisted her in running the restaurant. Then, in the long hot summer of 1973 she and Campbell became intimate.

Mrs Mills went on to describe the number of occasions that she and the accused went out to dinner or nightclubs together. During that period, she said, Campbell was being paid for his help in the supervision of the running of the restaurant and was visiting the Mills home frequently.

Then, in February 1974, Mrs Mills related how her husband started to show signs of annoyance at the friendship between herself and Campbell. He told them he was going to the United States for a visit but instead stayed in Jamaica, and early one Sunday morning, he surprised them together in Campbell’s apartment.

The court heard from the wife of the deceased what she described as a “heated argument” involving the three of them which followed later in the Mills’ home and ended with Richard Mills calling the police to escort the accused from his house.

Celestine Mills said that after that morning, she broke off the relationship with Campbell and her marriage was saved. She said that her lover took the break-up calmly. She told the court that before he was killed, she and Mills had been making progress on the journey back to a happy relationship.

The helper in the Mills’ home at the time of the incident, Ivy Graser, testified that on May 18, 1974, Mr Mills had returned home after taking his small son to a birthday party next door. She saw him watching television by the open window in the living room.

Sometime later she said she heard a horrible gagging scream from the deceased. She ran in the direction of the noise and found Mills’ body lying on the floor. Graser called the next door neighbour Christine Mitchell, who was a trained nurse.

Mitchell told the court that in response to that call, she rushed to the Mills’ home taking with her a flashlight and some smelling salts. On the way, the nurse ran into Campbell who was clad in dark clothes and wearing a pair of black gloves. He was carrying the prone body of Mills from the house.

She testified further that Campbell had told her that Mills was ill and he was taking him to the doctor.

Dr Noel March, the pathologist who performed the post-mortem disclosed that Mills was “garrotted by a cord or band”. Death was due, he said, to strangulation.

Evidence was also adduced from the late Detective Inspector Albert Richards of the Flying Squad, Kingston (later Detective Superintendent, retired) that, acting on a report, he went to the home of the deceased. On arrival there, he said he saw the deceased sitting alone on the front seat of a motor car. He appeared to be dead.

Further enquiries, said the witness, led him to 8 Renfrew Road where he saw the accused, Campbell, in a room where he spoke to him. The late Detective Inspector Cleon D Aguilar of the Constant Spring Police Station (Detective Superintendent, retired) who arrested the accused, also gave evidence.

At the close of the prosecution’s case, Campbell made an unsworn statement from the dock in which he denied that he was in the Mills’ house that night, or that he killed Richard Mills. He claimed he was at home at Courtleigh Manor Apartments from Saturday night “reading, listening to the radio and sleeping” until the next morning when the police woke him up.

The judge’s summing up lasted for five hours and 20 minutes.

As the summing up progressed, the crowds outside the courtroom grew larger. Inside, the packed-to-capacity courtroom, the atmosphere grew tense as time grew near for the jury to retire to consider their verdict. Sitting in the dock, Campbell appeared calm and confident.

During the last hours of the trial, the Supreme Court building was surrounded by riot police, as according to police reports, the feeling of the crowd was so strong that it was feared there would be trouble if the verdict should be returned as “not guilty”.

Then came the moment. The jury retired to consider their verdict. In 10 minutes they were back. There was a deathly silence.

The foreman’s announcement of the unanimous verdict of “guilty of murder” was hardly audible due to the tumultuous noise coming from the crowd outside, some of whom were pressing their bodies close to the doors of the courtroom.

Asked if he had anything to say before the sentence of death was passed upon him, the accused said quietly: “I am innocent, sir.”

Crowds stampeded and swarmed outside the precincts of the court to catch a glimpse of Campbell being taken away in the police van. But they were duped as the van drove off without him and he was taken from the building by another exit.

He was sentenced to death on March 28,1975, but a new trial was ordered after his appeal was allowed by the Court of Appeal.

Following the second trial, Campbell was again convicted by a jury and sentenced to death on June 17, 1976. His subsequent appeal to the United Kingdom Privy Council was dismissed on October 10, 1981.

The Jamaican Privy Council reviewed his case thereafter and ruled that the prerogative of mercy should not be exercised. So saying, it ruled further that the decision of the courts stood and that the law should take its course, and the death sentence be carried out.

Following his execution in March 1982, Campbell’s body was buried in the prison compound.

Next week: Elsa Salsman: Murder at the Copacabana Beach

Sybil E Hibbert is a veteran journalist and retired court reporting specialist. She is also the wife of Retired ACP Isadore ‘Dick’ Hibbert, rated as one of the top Jamaican detectives of his time. Send commemnts to allend@jamaicaobserver.com.