A 34-year veteran of the Jamaica Constabulary, who led the investigations into a September 2017 murder at Roger Avenue, St Catherine, in which two of the defendants in the ongoing trial of 25 suspected members of the alleged Tesha Miller faction of the Klansman Gang are allegedly involved, on Monday told the court that despite receiving eyewitness accounts he was never able to peg a suspect.

Defendants Dwayne Frater and Lamar Rowe, according to the indictment unsealed by the Crown on February 4 when the trial began in the Home Circuit Division of the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston, are to answer for the murder of that man who has been identified as George Richards.

Frater and Lamar, under count seven of the indictment, are charged with “facilitating the commission of a serious offence by a criminal organisation”, contrary to Section 6 of the Criminal Justice (Suppression of Criminal Organizations) Act, commonly called the anti-gang legislation.

The admission of the self-styled “sleuth”, a detective inspector assigned to the constabulary’s Major Investigations Division (MID), harks back to indications by the Crown in its opening address that the evidence of its two star witnesses (yet to be unveiled) helped cops crack the majority of the 16 crimes which had remained “unsolved” for some seven to eight years, for which their former cronies are now on trial.

The acting deputy director of public prosecutions, following the arraignment of the 25, had said the two ex-gangsters-turned-star-witnesses pleaded guilty to varying offences including murder, and are currently serving their sentences.

The senior prosecutor, in urging presiding judge Justice Dale Palmer to accept the evidence of the two, said, “Until these primary two witnesses were found, or assisted the Crown, the large majority of these 16 incidents were unsolved cases with no suspects… the significance of these principal witnesses is underscored by their own involvement in these previously unsolved cases. In short, until the police became aware of these witnesses, there were no charged suspects in some of these cases for as long as seven to eight years.”

On Monday the detective inspector, who said in 2017 he was the team supervisor on the case, testified that after he commenced murder investigations in 2017 he at no time had any suspect in relation to the crime.

“No sir, I did not identify the suspect,” he told the acting deputy director of public prosecutions eliciting the evidence.

Later, under cross-examination by defence attorney Kemar Robinson as to whether he had identified “possible eyewitnesses”, the veteran cop said, “Yes sir, more than one.”

Probed as to whether he had identified any “possible suspects” he maintained, “I did not identify suspects; I have not identified a suspect until this day.”

“I am going to suggest that when you said you did not identify any suspects, you are not telling the truth,” Robinson said.

“I disagree with you vehemently,” the cop stated unblinkingly.

“Just to be clear, did you identify possible suspects though?” Robinson quizzed in backtracking.

“Yes, possible suspects,” the self-styled sleuth replied.

Asked if he had made these up on his own he said “No.”

Prodded further about whether names he had written on an overleaf in his notebook, where he had written about the Roger Avenue crime scene under the heading “Possible suspects”, were related to the case, the sleuth, after several checks, maintained that those names were for an “unrelated matter”.

Under further questioning by defence attorney Denise Hinson on the same issue, the cop, who said he remained lead investigator up to 2018, responded: “I did not identify any suspects.”

He, in the meantime, testified that on the night in question he made “several observations” upon getting to the scene where he counted some 13 spent shells, and a vehicle with what appeared to be bullet holes, as well as “a lot of bloodstains on the roadway”, and a pair of flip flops. Elaborating on the location of those spent shells he said, “Some of them were close to the vehicle, as if someone was shot right beside the vehicle.”

However, though he referenced the pair of footwear, when it came time to say where in a photo displayed to him those slippers were, the detective inspector initially struggled to point them out, confessing that on Valentine’s Day he got an injury to his left eye which affected his ability to see, provoking much mirth from those in the courtroom.

His testimony came following that of a detective sergeant assigned to the MID earlier on Monday. The testimony of the detective sergeant, a forensic crime scene investigator, helped the Crown shore up its case regarding the chain of custody (sequential documentation or trail that accounts for the sequence of custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition) of evidence from that crime scene.

The detective sergeant told the court that in October 2017 he was at Archer’s Funeral Home in Spanish Town, St Catherine, where he observed the post-mortem conducted on the body of Richards, whose remains were identified by a relative. He said the body had several wounds to the face and upper torso.

He told the court that blood, damaged copper jacket bullets, and two pieces of lead removed from the body by a government pathologist were packaged, sealed and transported by him to the MID where they were logged and placed in the exhibit storeroom to be transported to the Government’s forensic lab. He said on a later day he collected the items and took them to the lab where he handed the package containing the blood to an analyst at the biology department and was given a receipt. He said the other package was handed over to the ballistics department and a receipt also obtained.

The 25 accused, the second faction of the gang to now be tried by the courts, are to answer to 16 offences allegedly committed over the span of five years between August 2017 and November 2022, according to the case being built by the Crown.

The matter continues on Tuesday at 10:00 am.