Today will mark 28 years since Monica Reece was murdered and her body dumped on Main Street and while the killing remains unsolved to date, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum has assured that the investigation remains open.
However, Blanhum says that the Guyana Police Force had a “real prospect” of successfully solving the case back in 2016 but a shake-up of the force got in the way.
In July, 2016, Blanhum had announced that the Guyana Police Force’s (GPF) Cold Crimes Unit was reopening several cold cases, a decision which he had said followed calls made by members of the public, and particularly by relatives.
Blanhum recently explained to Stabroek News that sometime after this decision was taken, several ranks who were working on the case including him and the Head of the Criminal Investigation Department’s (CID) Major Crimes Department were removed from their posts.
As a result, the case was handed over to other ranks who replaced them.
“Several persons were reinterviewed. Also former senior investigators who worked on the case were contacted and they provided pertinent information surrounding the investigation,” Blanhum said.
However, Blanhum explained that from since that point there has been “significant” change in the circumstance.
As such, he said it is now an “uphill” task to convince those individuals who were cooperating with the investigators.
Nevertheless, Blanhum said the case file in the matter is currently being examined by investigators of the Cold Crimes Unit with a hope of solving the crime.
“Notwithstanding the challenges, the family deserves justice and the GPF is duty bound to ensure that the person/s responsible for the death of Monica Reece is brought to justice,” he noted.
The death of the then 19-year-old Reece, a security guard, has been seen in some quarters as one of the major events in the rise of crime in the 1990s.
Reece’s body was dumped from a speeding pickup vehicle in the vicinity of the Geddes Grant building (now Courts) on Main Street, Georgetown on April 9, 1993.
The police had picked up a suspect and questioned him and also detained a vehicle he sometimes drove, but shortly after, the lack of evidence caused him to be released and the vehicle was returned.
There were doubts during that period that the police had made a thorough effort to solve the murder. Reece’s killing became emblematic of the many unsolved and gruesome murders that followed.
