Three men are in police custody in connection with Thursday’s murder/robbery at D’Urban Backlands in which a 76-year-old UK-based Guyanese was beaten in the head before being strangled to death.
A senior police officer told Stabroek News yesterday that among those in custody are two persons who were conducting repairs on the Lot 180 Century Palm Gardens property, owned by the deceased George Cadogan, a retired solicitor and British citizen.
On the day of the discovery, the duo did not show up for work. They were picked up by investigators between Friday afternoon and yesterday morning for questioning.
This newspaper revisited the home yesterday and police officers were there questioning the man’s son and daughter who arrived in the country from England on Friday night. When approached, the daughter said the family did not wish to speak to the press at this time.
Police in a release had said that Cadogan was found lying on the floor of his house around 4.45 pm with his hands and feet bound and his mouth gagged with a bed sheet. The release said the entire bedroom was ransacked. Further investigations revealed that a laptop computer was missing.
It was Cadogan’s brother, Glen, who made the gruesome discovery. He turned up at the house after several telephone calls to the home went unanswered and noticed that a sheet of plywood put to block a window on the ground floor was out of place.
He had earlier tied a bag of fruits to the gate after his brother did not respond to his calls.
Relatives had told this newspaper that the dead man was a UK-based Guyanese who returned home just before Christmas last year.
The man was planning to sell the property and return to England where his wife and children reside.
At the time of his death, some minor repairs were being done on the house. Relatives had expressed suspicions that the perpetrator/s gained entry to the house though ground floor windows which were being repaired.