Thomas became suspect after leading cops to missionaries’ murder scene
KINGSTON, Jamaica – The investigating officer (IO) in the trial of the two missionaries killed in St Mary in 2016 testified on Monday in the Supreme Court that the moment the defendant Andre Thomas brought police investigators to the crime scene in Albion Mountain in the parish, in his mind Thomas became a suspect.
The murder victims, Harold Nichols, 53 and Randy Hentzel, 49, were missionaries for the Pennsylvania-based Teams for Medical Missions. They went missing on Saturday, April 30, 2016, after leaving their Tower Isle, St Mary homes on motorcycles to visit a site where they would be doing charity work the following week.
When they did not return, a search party later that day discovered Hentzel’s body lying face down with his green helmet still over his head, with his arms bound “tightly” behind his back by a piece of cloth torn from the green T-shirt in which he was clad. Nichols’ body was found some distance away on Sunday afternoon.
During cross-examination, Thomas’ defense counsel, Leroy Equiano, asked the IO, “now having shown you certain things, did he become a suspect in your mind?”
“When he took us to the exact spot where I had seen the bodies of Mr Randy Hentzel and Harold Nichols, on April 30, 2016, there and then he (Thomas) became a suspect in my mind,” the IO, a deputy Superintendent of Police answered.
During his testimony, the lawman read three statements written by the defendant, which was later admitted into evidence.
In one of the statements signed June 5, 2016, Thomas, who is said to be a construction worker, told investigators that he was at his house when he heard his relative, Dwight Henry – who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the missionaries murder – confessed that he was behind the murders, along with another man.
READ: ‘Thomas shoot him, then he chop him in his head’
However, in the other statement dated June 11, 2016, Thomas reportedly said he and Henry killed the man but participated only because Henry had threatened his life.
“Dwight said him blood thirst,” the police officer told the court, adding that Henry then said Thomas “a chicken out.”
Henry reportedly went on to call Thomas an idiot “because [look] how white people beat black people.”
Henry, who is serving life for the 2016 double murder of the missionaries, in a seeming attack of conscience last week, claimed that he and Thomas, who is now on trial for the slayings, had no motive for killing the men.
READ: ‘We did it for no reason’
Cross-examination of the deputy superintendent of police is expected to continue on Tuesday.
– Candice Haughton
