The family of murdered miner Andy Whyte is dissatisfied with the way police have handled the investigation, while saying the only suspect in the case was released without proper questioning.
Whyte’s brother Junior told Stabroek News that his family believes that it has “forever been denied justice” as a result of the police’s handling of the case.
Andy Whyte, 40, of Port Kaituma, North West District (NWD) went missing on February 24. His decomposing remains were discovered on a trail in Eyelash Backdam, NWD three days later. Crime Chief Seelall Persaud confirmed that the man, in whose company Whyte was last seen alive, had been arrested but was released several days later.
Andy owned a dredge and had been operating in the area for a while. Junior explained that his brother employed several men and a woman who cooked for them, at the camp. The suspect, he said, was among the men who worked for his brother at the dredging site.
Junior said that he flew to NWD the day after Andy’s remains were discovered and journeyed to the location with police. “His body was in such a bad state that we had to bury it right away and then the next day the pathologist fly in and we had to go back and exhume the body to see what caused his death,” Junior said. The post-mortem examination revealed that Andy had been stabbed 15 times about the body and his heart, lungs and liver had been badly damaged.
From the beginning, Junior said, he was dissatisfied with the way the police had treated him and by their response to the matter. He said on his arrival in Port Kaituma, he was told by police that they did not have transportation and would not travel to the murder scene if Junior did not provide it. “I had to pay a cruiser $40,000 to carry them in there two times,” Junior said. By this time, he recalled, police had already held the suspect and they told him that the man had denied knowing Andy. “This woulda definitely raise a red flag in my mind; the fact that this man deny knowing my brother when he used to work for him,” Junior said.
He also told this newspaper that the suspect was found with a large sum of cash on his person for which he could not account. When Andy left his mining camp, he reportedly had a quantity of raw gold in his possession, which was missing. “They [police] coulda at least try to find out if anyone had bought raw gold from this man because that is why my brother was killed…is gold he get killed for,” he said.
Conflicting stories
Junior also said that police had held the cook for questioning. The woman, according to him, has told conflicting stories of what happened on the day that Andy left with the suspect for the Eyelash Backdam Landing. “She tell the police one thing and then she tell me another thing and I pointed this out to the police… and them two other men who were working with my brother told me that my brother and the man [the suspect] were both having a relationship with this woman,” he said.
According to Junior, after police told him that they had released the suspect because they had no evidence against him, he returned to the city. He said he then made several attempts to meet with Commander of Police E&F Division David Ramnarine on March 1, 3, and 7 but he was told on all three occasions that
Ramnarine was unavailable. Further, he said the Port Kaituma police recently called him requesting that he return to the location to give them a statement. The man said that he has already given police a statement and does not understand why they want him to return to the location or how it will aid the investigation of his brother’s death. “I [am] really frustrated. It costing me a lot of money to travel in and out of there and I don’t know how they [the police] can call and tell me they want a statement when I done give them one. With how things going now, I really feel like their nonsense had cost my family to be forever denied justice,” Junior said.
Meanwhile, the aunt-in-law of the deceased, Patricia Garraway, said relatives were “upset” and “shocked” when police released the suspect. The woman said police told them that there was no evidence and no eyewitness so it would not be possible to build a case against the man. “It de real sad when they loose him,” Garraway said.
According to the woman, the suspect was arrested on a boat while he was trying to flee the mining district. She too said that when police first questioned the man, he denied knowing Andy and it was not until he was confronted by other men who had been working with him at the dredging site that he admitted that the deceased had employed him.
Garraway said Andy’s employees had told her that two of them left the camp, which is located in the Tiger Wood area, for Eyelash Landing, leaving Andy, the woman and the suspect behind. She said the woman later told her that Andy and the suspect left the camp for Eyelash Landing to buy rations and that it was the last time that she had seen the men. “Ah ain’t know is what really happen but like half-way out the trail or so Andy get attack because when de other two man dem was walking in back to de camp dem see a set of blood on the trail,” Garraway said she had been told.
The men then returned to the camp and told the woman about what they had seen; sharing their suspicions that something horrible had happened to Andy. The woman and the men then travelled to the police in Arankaka and reported Andy missing.
Garraway said the police had then travelled to the trail and a search was launched for Andy. The search proved futile and police in Port Kaituma were called. The man’s decomposed remains were discovered at the end of the third day after he had gone missing, she said. A similar account had been given by a resident from Port Kaituma early last month after the suspect was released.
