CRIES and screams from members of a search party in the streets outside her Tower Isle, St Mary, home on Sunday May 1, 2016 was the crippling confirmation for Teri Nichols that her husband of over 25 years, Harold, would not be keeping his promise to “be back in a hour”.

Harold Nichols, 53, and his colleague missionary for the Pennsylvania-based Teams for Medical Missions, Randy Hentzel, 49, of Iowa, had on Saturday April 30 left on motorcycles intending to visit a site where they would be doing some charity work. They never made it as Hentzel’s battered body was found late Saturday by police in bushes near his motorcycle, while Nichols’ body was found the next day some miles away, bound and beaten as well. The cause of death for both men was later said to be gunshot wounds and multiple chop wounds to the back of their heads.

“They were only supposed to be gone an hour. Harold had needed to go check on the woman we were going to be building a house for that weekend. Their day was twofold as they had to make sure the foundation was laid, and Randy had a Bible college student who needed a home and he wanted Harold to go see if it was something he could commit to,” Nichols told a judge and jury on Tuesday during day two of the trial for cab driver Andre Thomas, who is facing two counts of murder.

Nichols was the first of five witnesses to take the stand on Tuesday morning in the matter which is being heard by Supreme Court Justice Leighton Pusey. Smiling fleetingly at the memory of the “back in an hour” pledge, Nichols told the court that she had been preparing “a Sunday School lesson for the next day, which was church” when she noticed that her husband had left both his phones behind. Those phones, she said, “rang off the hook” for most of the day. Later that evening though was when she was forced to admit that “something was wrong”.

“I received a number of calls asking me if I knew where Harold was. I knew something was wrong, it was pretty crazy,” she said, her voice thickening with unshed tears.

A picture of Hentzel’s dead body was produced by the police later that evening but, “at that time they still didn’t know where Harold was”, Nichols said, fighting back tears.

She said the next day, May 1, brought the dreaded answer. “I remember a large amount of people left our community to go search. I heard people screaming and crying in the street. I knew they must have found him dead…that day was very hard…I remember they found Harry a long way away,” Nichols told the court. She said when she was asked to identify her husband’s body a day later she did not because, “I didn’t want to see my husband like that.”

Nichols said she asked two of their colleague missionaries to do the identification of the bodies on behalf of herself and her mourning friend Sarah Hentzel.

On Tuesday a detective sergeant who was stationed at the Port Maria Police Station said he made a 30- to 45-minute trek in the company of a member of the search party who breathlessly summoned him after Nichols was found.

“When we got to an open area, Val [community member] pointed out a motorcycle. I also observed the body of a male beside it, face down on the ground, clad in a brown plaid shorts, brown sandals, and a bright green shirt with a section of the back cut out. The hands were also bound with the section of the shirt that was cut out,” the cop said. He told the court that some metres away from the body was another motorbike. He said there was also blood on the ground and a spent shell.

Thomas, clad in a red shirt and black pants, his short hair in plaits, chewed furiously at his nails while listening to the testimony of the detective sergeant detailing how he found the body of Nichols. At other points during the hearing he sat forward, peering through the wooden slats in the dock.

Dwight Henry, his co-accused who had pleaded guilty for his role in the murders, is serving a life sentence with eligibility for parole after 28 years.

Three community witnesses took the stand on Monday. A total of 21 witnesses are expected to testify in the trial which should last two weeks. The matter resumes at 10:00 this morning.