C. Roy ReynoldsSOON AFTER the opening of the police investigation into the gruesome double murder at premises 16 South Camp Road it became clear that this might not be simply a case of violent robbery. Preliminary data indicated that there might be a web of intrigue with international connections.
According to The Gleaner of Monday, February 4, 1935 the characters involved might not even be who they were thought to have been. The victim identified as Francis Gomez appeared to have been an alias whose real name was B.F. Metzpan and he was not born in Cuba as was claimed but in British Honduras though he had been a long-time resident of Cuba.
As for the other victim Pollen, he had not come from Cuba as he claimed, but from Santo Domingo. Added to this was information supplied by a seaman to the effect that a number of murders had been occurring in Santo Domingo with the same signature features: that is, stabbed repeatedly in a pattern around the heart, bound and gagged.
The police established that there had been a number of meetings between the victims and the suspected killers up to shortly before the murders had occurred. And apart from the actual murderers there had been a number of accomplices.
Efforts to trace the murder weapon indicated that it might have been a dagger once owned by a Cuban boxer who resided in Jamaica and had been sold to another man for four shillings.
Police discovered that one of the suspected killers had returned to his lodgings on the afternoon of the murder carrying an envelope which looked like a registered letter. He went to his room, locked in and was gone the next morning.
But the police were not the only ones developing theories about the murders. According to one such making the rounds of the city's rumour circuit the victims were not who they had been thought to have been but other men dressed in their clothes to confuse the investigation. Members of the public were as well questioning the police handling of the matter in the early stages, particularly the seeming lack of diligence when they had been called to the scene when the murders were actually in progress, had merely made polite enquiry and left the scene.
Forensic examination of the bodies indicated that the victims had been clubbed first on the head with sufficient force to cause fracture of the skill. Later they were then bound, gagged and methodically stabbed to death.
Meanwhile the three suspects which had managed to escape were identified as a barber, a tailor and a businessman. And the police discovered that victim Pollen, while not having been a Cuban detective on a mission to the island, actually had a brother in Cuba who was a police officer.
Apparently anxious to allay any fear that their failure to act earlier had led to a clean get-away by the culprits, the police announced by Sunday, February 3 that they had located two of the men. One had been apprehended at an American port and the other was under observation on a boat bound for the Dominican Republic.
Meanwhile The Gleaner itself was doing its own investigation. On Saturday, February 2 it interviewed the landlord of the 72 Wildman Street premises where Gomez, alias Metzpan, had lived, a Mrs. Nation, who described the deceased as about 37 years of age who claimed to have been born in Matanza Cuba and had a wife and three children there. She said she had been told that he was visiting Jamaica on business. On the day before the murders, a Sunday, he attended services at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, came back, had breakfast and after some hours, went out. He returned in the evening and spent the night. He left for the last time about 12.30 on the afternoon of the murders. About two hours before he left he was visited by a burly Cuban who asked no questions when he arrived but went straight to the victim's door, but Gomez was not there.
Mrs. Nation also told The Gleaner that a cable had been delivered to Gomez on the Monday morning. Described as "mysterious" by The Gleaner, the cable read "SK 3 1803 G. S.. Santiago 10 27, 550 P.L.C. Pollen 72 Wildman Street." According to The Gleaner it all translated in English to: "Holiday Tuesday. Postal Order." but in keeping with the growing web of intrigue the newspaper concluded that it was a code and might have been a warning.
She said further that on the morning of Tuesday, following a letter from the Royal Bank of Canada addressed to Pollen had been received. This and other items had been handed over to the police.
The Jamaican police seemed to have been well onto the track of at least two of the suspected murderers, but it would not be a short process and before it ended it was to create several precedents in the history of police action in Jamaica.
