- Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer
Goldiana Anderson, left, and her mother, Janet Moore, were attacked by Wilfred Rhoden in separate incidents on December 14, 2003. At right, Rhoden
Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter
THEY ARE coming out of the hospital one by one and none of them will ever forget the day Wilfred Rhoden tried to kill them.
Janet's left hand is in a sling and she can't feel or wiggle her fingers.
Sixteen-year-old Goldiana's left hand is in a cast and only a stub is left of her right hand.
Kadian, 11, and Tat-jona, 6, are still recovering in the hospital.
The 49-year-old taxi driver is now dead but neither Janet Moore nor her three daughters have accepted it.
The sturdily-built woman appears to have weathered her attack much better than the petite 16-year-old, Goldiana Anderson, whose partially shaven head reveals a collage of scars.
TUMULTUOUS RELATIONSHIP
On the night of December 14, 2003, Ms. Moore was stabbed several times across her body and left for dead in bushes along the dark Old Stony Hill Road in St. Andrew. Later that same night Wilfred Rhoden attacked her daughters while they slept at her rented home at 29 Crescent Road, Kingston 10.
Ms. Moore said Rhoden attacked her with a machete after she told him she was leaving their tumultuous relationship for good.
She had walked out on him so many times before. Everytime the arguments in their 14-year relationship became too much to bear she would walk out and threaten never to come back. But Wilfred wouldn't go away.
"Him always say if me leave him him ago kill me and then kill himself."
Everything happened so fast. Like a tornado ripping through their lives, like a hurricane beating on their memories, Wilfred had snapped and she hadn't seen it coming.
"If me did know say him did ago try that night it couldn't happen, because him cannot manage me," said Ms. Moore.
Mr. Rhoden was a violent man she said, "an illiterate and angry man" who could not control his temper and Ms. Moore was hoping that he would just let the relationship go.
"Him start a whole heap a argument. Mi carry police on him nuff time. Him ignorant and him violent, even him friends them who him play dominoes with couldn't deal with him.
"I remember one time when I was running a house bar. Him and him friends had some disagreement over a game of dominoes and him just take up a chair and lick the man with it," said Ms. Moore. "I moved out on him in 1992. But he wouldn't let me go. I even took him to the Family Court just for him to get some counselling and it's like it just go through one ear and come through the next."
TRICKED INTO AN AMBUSH
Mr. Rhoden had tricked her into an ambush, she said.
"The Sunday night when I was leaving him ask me if I was going to move and leave him. Ah tell him yes. My 11-year-old who is Kadian, tried to come into the car with us and him tell her that she can't come because him wasn't sure if him was going to come back home right away," she said. "We were driving along when he turned onto the Old Stony Hill Road. I asked him why him driving this way and he said because it is shorter."
Ms. Moore said she started getting a little suspicious of Rhoden's motive when she realised how slow he was driving along the road as he generally drove fast.
He then complained of the car, "boiling over" several times and when he stopped along the road the third time, he opened the trunk of his car and came back and asked her if she would leave him for another man.
Before she could answer, he gripped her hair and plunged a knife in her chest and inflicted several stabs to her body before leaving her for dead in bushes.
"Even though I was blacking out mi see when him run off. Him run off so fast him just jump in the car and drive off," said Ms. Moore.
After fighting the blackouts in the bushes for several minutes, Ms. Moore said she stumbled onto the road and tried to wave down motorists for help but everybody swerved away from her as she staggered in the road.
She later remembered that she had her cellular phone in her bag and used it to call 119 which she said responded fast enough.
CHILDREN ATTACKED
Mr. Rhoden's murderous rage, however, climaxed on the sleeping girls at Crescent Road where Goldiana was the first victim. The girls were so shocked that they did not even scream.
"I was asleep when I got the first chop," said Goldiana. "I tried to get up off the bed but he pushed me back and just kept chopping. I was trying to get the blood out of my face and I asked him if him going to kill me and him say 'yes,'" said Goldiana. "I ran to the bathroom and tried to wash the blood from my face and that was when I realised that my hand was gone," said Goldiana.
She said as she fretted in fearful silence in the bathroom, she heard six-year-old Tat-jona plead ,"mi nuh do nutten Daddy," then Kadian followed with the same.
Soon after their cries she heard the chopping start again and she made a dash to a zinc building on the compound where she lived.
"All I was interested in is to call my mother," said Goldiana who explained that she realised she was laying down in dog filth.
She had no idea that Kadian had managed to escape from the house to get help, but, after she heard the voices of neighbours, she began screaming for "help!"
Now, when she looks back, says Goldiana, "Death was too easy for him (Wilfred). He should have lived, gone before the court and the judge give him back to us so that we could do what we want with him. Death was too easy."
Wilfred Rhoden died on December 17, 2003, succumbing to wounds he received during his suicide attempt after he had chopped up his family.
