'Two puddles of blood and a live round'

A Scenes of Crime investigator was on Monday the latest to take the stand in the ongoing trial of St Mary cab driver Andre Thomas, who is facing two counts of murder for the 2016 killings of American missionaries Randy Hentzel and Harold Nichols in that parish.

Nichols, 53, and Hentzel, 49, his colleague missionary for the Pennsylvania-based Teams for Medical Missions, went missing on Saturday, April 30 after leaving their Tower Isle, St Mary, homes on motorcycles intending to visit a site where they would be doing some charity work the following week. A search party later that day recovered Hentzel's battered body in bushes in Wentworth District, while Nichols' body was found several miles away on the Sunday afternoon.

The detective corporal who testified via Zoom, at the hearing in the Home Circuit Division of the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston, said he was processing a crime scene in Gayle, St Mary, when he was called and sent to the murder scene where Hentzel had been found.

The cop said on getting there he collected physical evidence and took photographs with an authorised camera. Four of those photographs showing the motorcycles the men were riding, a live round, and the murder scene minus the bodies were entered as exhibits.

He described the body of Hentzel as 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 he was clad in. No photograph was shown of the body to the court.

"About 180 feet from the body I observed a live round on the ground," the cop testified. He said another 20 feet away from Hentzel was the second motorbike with a black helmet next to it and a black knapsack. Close by, he said, were two puddles of blood.

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 that could chop "the branch of a big tree".

On Monday Thomas, clad in a black pants and red and white dotted shirt, alternated between reclining, listening through half-closed eyes, and hunching forward at times as if cold. At other times the small-bodied accused, in-between stretches, emitted exaggerated yawns and coughs.

The widows of both men, supported by two close friends, observed the proceedings quietly.

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

The matter, which is being heard by Supreme Court Judge Justice Leighton Pusey with a jury, resumes today at 2 pm when a ballistics expert is expected to take the stand.

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