MURDER EVEN then was not a strange phenomenon in Jamaica. But in mid-June 1952 the Jamaican police was faced with the dilemma not of identifying the murder, but the murdered.
On June 20 the body of a woman was discovered in a cave on the rocky seashore at Anchovy a little south of Port Antonio. The body was completely nude and void of any other sort of identification, so before the police could concentrate on catching the murderer they had to first determine who had been murdered. And that would be a long process.
A report in The Gleaner of Wednes-day, June 21 led off by comparing the dilemma facing the police with the case of the Albany postmistress murdered in 1945, a mystery that still remains unsolved. And now there was rife speculation that this too would end up unsolved.
Almost certainly for the first time, the medical faculty of the recently-established University College of the West Indies was called upon for forensic assistance when Professor of Anatomy, Mr. Harper, was asked to examine the body. That examination was far from conclusive in helping to establish identity.
As near as the professor could tell the age of the corpse was between 20 and 40 years, of light black complexion and between five foot four and five foot seven tall, all of which did little to narrow the search for identity.
Search of clues
As the police fanned out over the area in search of clues they had very little to go on. The only thing they knew about the cause of death was that the head had been severed by a sharp instrument and there were a few blunt instrument traumas to the torso. They couldn't even tell if the death had a sexual connection as the condition of the body after an estimated six days meant that with the forensic tools of the time sexual assault could not have been established one way or the other, though the nudity of the corpse sparked suspicion that some sexual passion might have been involved.
As for the fact that the head had been so neatly removed it sparked a rumour that film star Errol Flynn, who was a regular visitor to Port Antonio and who had property in the area, was tangentially involved. The story went that the actor's father, a doctor in Australia, had secured the head for medical experimentation.
Examination of the area showed that the body had been thrown into the cave from an entrance above and that the perpetrator had attempted to block a channel from the sea. And this and other effort to thwart police action convinced many that some intricate mastermind was involved.
The case took on an even more sinister appearance when it was recalled in a Gleaner story that this was not the first time that the area had played host to tragedy. It recalled that the owner of the Blue Hole Club, a Mr. Anton Levy, had been taken from the sea twice in 1949, the last time as a corpse after he had been attacked, tied up and thrown into the sea.
As the police combed the surrounding areas in hope of coming up with some answer, a few pieces of clothing were found. But no one knew if there was a connection and when on June 22 additional clothing was found by swimmers Noel Foster and David Thompson in the water off Bryan's Bay, expectation was further heightened.
Meanwhile heavy seas impeded a more thorough search of the cave, but the discovery of the clothes gave police some hope that even without the vital head some identification might be possible.
Then the news broke in Kingston that a half Chinese girl who had gone on a visit to Portland days earlier was missing. A description of the clothes she was wearing when last seen was quickly circulated. Based possibly on this new development the body which had been buried was dug up for the medical pathologist to have another go at it. Tissue from several areas of the body was removed for further study.
Meanwhile an islandwide request went out for reports on any missing woman between the ages of 20 and 40 years. The second-round examination led to the view that the victim had been of a much clearer complexion than was originally thought. The body, too, was now described as "well-formed and shapely" and the absence of callus on the soles of the feet led the police to suspect that she had been in "better than ordinary circumstances."
Detailed examination of the clothing recovered from the two locations showed part of an African print skirt, a peach-coloured flat-silk dress trimmed with blue, figured buttons and blue lace. Among the other items of apparel found were a jippi-jippa hat trimmed with white corded ribbon, a blood-stained handkerchief such as was popularly sold in Indian stores, as well as another of fine silk. All of which police suspected denoted a "woman of taste." A supposition that was not too close to reality as we shall see later.
