DWIGHT Henry, 33, the man who is serving life for the 2016 murders of American missionaries Randy Hentzel and Harold Nichols on Wednesday, shot down suggestions that he had questioned Hentzel, ‘searched his pocket like a police’, asked him his destination and told the Caucasian missionary before shooting him in the head, “mi don’t like white people because white people wicked”.

Defence attorney Leroy Equiano, who represents Dwight Thomas — a “far cousin” of Henry’s who is now being tried for his role in those murders — on Wednesday told a hearing at the Home Circuit Division of the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston that Henry, who is now Crown witness under a plea bargain arrangement, had told the ambushed man while he lay trussed up on the ground that his grandfather had told him “all the things white people did to black people”.

According to Equiano, Henry further in a statement given in the presence of a top cop while in custody in Kingston said, “mi just inna di bush and mi si di white man dem a pass and mi hate white nation, so mi kill him, mi shoot him innah him head, Sir”.

In that statement he also said, “mi juss si dem an mi hate dem. Mi tell him fi lie down and mi shoot him inna him head and one a dem run and mi shot him and Baugh [pet name for Thomas] chop him. Dem take many life back den so mi have hatred for dem; Mi grandfather tell me about when dem use to work on the cane farm”.

Equiano also pressed Henry to recall saying in yet another instance that “dem take too many lives back then so we take back for them”.

Henry, however, maintained on Wednesday that he exchanged no words with the fated missionary.

“I did not correspond with him,” he said firmly, while insisting that at no time did his cousin tell him to “leave the man alone”.

Henry in testifying against Thomas has asserted that he is only responsible for the death of one of the men, while his cousin shot and chopped the other. He further claims that he did not know the men and was seeing them for the first time on the day of the murders. He insisted that neither the ambush nor murders were planned and said none of the victims spoke during the entire episode.

Nichols, 53, and Hentzel, 49, his colleague missionary for the Pennsylvania-based Teams for Medical Missions, 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 some charity work the following week. When they did not return, a search party later that day discovered Hentzel’s body lying face down, 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 the Sunday afternoon.

Wednesday, during a second round of a cross-examination marked by heavily pregnant pauses in which Henry stonewalled the defence by refusing to answer several questions, an undaunted Equiano accused the former resort worker of lying to “protect” himself and implicate his cousin.

“I am not lying, I speak the truth to the court because I feel sad about what me and Andre Thomas did and I didn’t want to waste the court’s time, so I ask my attorney for the plea bargain,” Henry insisted.

Under further probe by Equiano, Henry denied that he, when cautioned in respect of the murder of Nichols flamboyantly, said, “so mi get charge fi dah one deh? Big man ting. Mi want yuh link mi cousin and tell him seh mi a tek di top one and him tek di bottom one”.

“I don’t remember that. Both of us did the murder,” Henry said Wednesday.

Henry, in being led through his evidence by a senior prosecutor on Tuesday, had said that on the Saturday morning in question, he and Thomas were “up in the bush, chopping jelly [coconuts]” when they saw the two men approaching on motorbikes.

He claimed that Thomas stopped the men at gunpoint and told them to get off the bikes. Henry said he told one of the men to lie down on the ground and tied him up with a piece of cloth torn from the shirt he wore. He said the next man ran off and was fired on by Thomas. He said he joined Thomas in chasing that man, leaving the other man tied up.

“While wi running him down, the man fall in a pool of water; Andre Thomas shoot him then he chop him in his head with a machete…then we came back up at the top where we tie up the next man, then I shoot the next man in his head back, me do it miss, then we go our separate ways,” Henry said.

According to the inmate who will be eligible for parole after serving 28 years, Thomas was the one who gave him the gun so he could shoot the victim.

On Wednesday Henry sassily dismissed the attorney’s insistence that he had agreed to give evidence against his cousin in January this year just to get a reduced sentence.

Asked by Equiano how many years reduction he had gained based on his sentence being whittled down to 28 years down from a maximum of 50, Henry, who told the court earlier that he was unable to read, sassed, “I don’t know maths”.

“It would be 22 years more, that’s a lot of difference, Mr Henry, I suggest to you that it is this difference between 28 and 50 years, why you gave the [later] statement in January that you want to speak the truth,” Equiano persisted.

“I wanted to tell the truth that is me and Andre Thomas that do it because I feel sad and ashamed about what happen,” Henry retorted.

“Your first court appearance in the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston was in 2016, between 2016 and January 2023, it was that long before you wanted to tell the truth?’ Equiano quizzed cynically,

“Yes, because I don’t want to waste the court time,” Henry replied unfazed.

Last Thursday, a consultant forensic pathologist contracted by the national security ministry disclosed that Hentzel died instantly from a single bullet to the head fired at close range, while Nichols, who was still alive after being shot once in the back, died from one of six chop wounds to his head delivered with enough force to chop “the branch of a big tree”.

Thomas, clad in full black, was observed at one point with a hand over his face shaking his plaited head from side to side, on Wednesday.

The matter, which is being heard by Supreme Court Judge Justice Leighton Pusey with a jury, resumes on Monday at 10:00 am where Equiano is expected to conclude his cross-examination of Henry.