A traumatised girlfriend recounted for the Home Circuit Court a tale of horror on the night of May 15, 1983 when she and her boyfriend were allegedly dragged out of bed at gunpoint, shot and left in a burning car to die.

Her boyfriend, Maurice Forrester, was a fisherman from Belmont district in Westmoreland. Accused of his murder was Leroy Simmonds, a painter of a Kingston address who, the court was told, pounced on the couple in bed and some time later, with the assistance of two men (unknown), took them away in a car. Forrester was afterwards taken out of the car, gagged, shot and his body put back in the car and burnt, the court heard.

It was also the prosecution’s case that the girlfriend tried to escape by running away but she was chased, caught and dragged back to the car, where she was shot in the mouth by Simmonds, necessitating the loss of almost all her teeth. Then she was said to have been placed in the car, and the car was set on fire with her inside.

In opening the case for the prosecution, Crown Counsel Vinette Grant (now in private practice) told trial judge Lensley Wolfe (later Chief Justice of Jamaica, now retired and chairman of the Public Service Commission), that the terrified young woman, now badly burnt, managed to free herself from the burning inferno and crawl to the side of the road where she was able to catch the attention of a passing motorist. He called the police.

Her testimony was the main plank on which the prosecution rested its case.

In his defence, Simmonds, in an unsworn statement from the dock, claimed that he did not know Westmoreland and had never lived in that parish. He told the court that he knew absolutely nothing about the killing.

The jury thought otherwise, for at the end of the summing up of His Lordship on Friday, November 7, 1987, for what was regarded by the prosecution as “a most vicious act committed on one’s fellowman”, Simmonds was convicted by the jury for Forrester’s murder.

He was thereafter sentenced by Justice Wolfe to pay the supreme penalty by hanging on the gallows of the St Catherine District Prison for the crime. Simmonds was defended by Anthony Spaulding, QC, (later minister of housing in the 1972 Michael Manley-led Administration, and now deceased).

But at the root of this case, as it turned out, was an allegation that the deceased, who had lived in a compound among other fishermen at Belmont, had ‘snitched’ on his colleagues by informing the police that they were dealing in and otherwise trading in ganja.

The police in turn, according to reports, then carried out a massive raid in the area, investigating armed robberies and suspected ganja dealers about a week before Forrester was murdered. The raid resulted in the deaths of six civilians who were alleged to have fired at the police party, and the response of the police was said to be that they had returned the fire. Reports were that a quantity of ganja was recovered and, among other exhibits, a ganja compressor, a fuel pump

and binoculars.

Police theorised that the abduction, gagging and subsequent shooting and burning to death of Forrester and the shooting and burning of his girlfriend, was done out of revenge.

As a consequence of the killing of the six people from Belmont, the Opposition Leader Michael Manley issued a call for a public enquiry to be held into the fatal killing of the six men by the police “in the interest of public confidence in the operations of the security system”.

A coroner’s inquest was subsequently ordered into that matter and separate proceedings followed.

But the centrepiece of this story rests with the alleged revenge killing of Forrester. The trial attracted large crowds to the No 1 Home Circuit Court in November 1987 to hear the detailed evidence which was not available to them due to the fact that the proceedings were held in camera for the protection of the main witness, in particular.

The chief investigator in this deadly twin attack on the couple was the then Det Inspector Reginald Grant (now retired ACP). He was assisted by a team of top detectives from CID Headquarters in Kingston.

Wolfe’s summing up to the jury dramatised the terrifying experience of that unforgettable night, based on the riveting testimony of Forrester’s girlfriend (name withheld for security reasons). She and Forrester had retired to bed on the night of May 15, 1983. Some time during the night, they were both awakened by someone knocking on the door. She said she heard Simmonds’ voice; she had known him before.

Simmonds, she testified, told them to open the door and Forrester did so. According to the witness, Simmonds entered the room armed with a gun. He was accompanied by another man, whom she did not know before. That man was armed with a dagger. Both Forrester and herself were ordered out of the house at gunpoint, she said.

Once outside, they were placed in a ‘rental’ car which Forrester had left parked outside.

There was a third man outside — also unknown to her — who got in the driver’s seat of the car, while Simmonds and the man with the dagger sat in the back seat at either end of herself and Forrester. They were securely wedged in.

And so, this silent journey began at Belmont and ended at Spur Tree in Manchester where the penultimate scene in this tragedy was played out. It was not only horrific, as described by the person who suffered the most pain in this whole exercise, but it was also heart-rending

and frightening.

According to the witness, she sat there in that rented car while Forrester begged and begged for his life when he realised that his abductors were going to kill him. But his pleas were all in vain. For shortly thereafter, according to her, the three men took Forrester a short distance from the car and Simmonds shot him in the head. Forrester fell to the ground. They then bound his hands and feet and put him in the back seat of the car.

Watching all this unfold before her very eyes and suspecting what was likely to be in store for her, the witness said she ran from the car. However, her escape was cut short when suddenly she felt strong arms dragging her back to the car.

It was her testimony that the man in the dock — Simmonds — pointed the gun at her and shot her in her mouth. She remembered falling.

She also heard one of the men calling Simmonds’ attention to the fact that she (witness) seemed to be alive, whereupon Simmonds replied: “Come man, she can’t live. The gal dead a’ready.”

It was to the witness’ credit and stout-heartedness, according to the evidence, that she managed to drag herself, all the while crawling on her belly, to the edge of the main road, where a passing motorist was observant enough to notice what appeared to him to be a “lump in the road” and summoned the police.

The evidence of the government pathologist, Dr Ramu, should serve as a learning post for police investigators in terms of scientific evidence when dealing with post-mortems.

Dr Ramu testified that he carried out a post-mortem on Forrester’s charred remains at the Mandeville Hospital Public Mortuary. In attendance at the post-mortem was Det Supt Isadore Hibbert, i/c Homicide (now retired ACP i/c Crime).

Dr Ramu told of probing and finding the bullet which had lodged in the skull of the deceased. He came to the conclusion that the cause of death was the gunshot wound to the head.

But when asked by the officer in attendance at the post-mortem how he was able to distinguish whether Forrester died from the bullet wound, as distinct from the burning, according to Supt Hibbert, the doctor’s response was: “Since no carbon monoxide was found in the lungs of the deceased, it therefore meant that Forrester died before he was burnt.”

Next week: The brutal murder of Madame Rose Leon, former government minister

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 detectives of his time.