Lovelette Brooks, Special Projects Editor

Mary Lynch raises her hands in triumph yesterday after being released from the Fort Augusta Correctional Centre in St. Catherine.- Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

There were cheers and tears as 66-year-old Mary Doyley Lynch, a former upper St. Andrew housewife, walked through the gates of the Fort Augusta Adult Correctional Centre yesterday at 2:20 p.m. a free woman.

After 14 years behind bars for the 1992 murder of her husband Leary, a former bank executive, she emerged, tasting freedom in a fuchsia pink floral outfit with matching bag and shoes, raised her hands in the air and said tearfully: "Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus. It has been 14 long years, but the Lord has kept me. I don't have much to say to you (the press) right now, but thank you my family, thank you."

Brief, tearful moment

Lynch cried as she hugged her two sisters and brother who had been waiting for over three hours for her release. The brief, tearful moment ended in front of the prison gates as she was quickly ushered into the waiting family car.

"We are here to give her all the support she needs, and Mary will be well taken care of. She wants a big steam fish, and that's what we have ready for her when she gets home," said her sister Maureen Doyley who resides in Miami. "We are not really happy, we are just relieved," she said as she received a small bag with Lynch's belongings, brought out by a family friend.

Journalists took up their positions outside the walls of Fort Augusta from as early as 7:00 a.m. in anticipation of an early release. While prison officials were busy screening visitors and fending off queries from the press, the inmates on the inside sang, cheered and chanted. There were echoes of "Freedom! Freedom!" and "Goodbye, Mary."

Prison officials who spoke with the newsteam unofficially, said Mary Lynch was an exemplary inmate, and that they would all miss her. "She should have been out long ago she deserves freedom. We will all miss her," said one officer. A fellow inmate described Lynch as "a very classy person, who did not interact with many people."

Mary Lynch was charged on May 29, 1992, with murdering her 54-year-old Barbadian-born husband Leary. The National Commercial Bank's divisional general manager for credit, went missing on May 23, 1992, and three weeks later, his skeletal remains were found in bushes in Smokey Vale, upper St. Andrew.

Chopped to death

Mr. Lynch was chopped to death at the couple's Cherry Gardens residence, St. Andrew. The body had 25 chop wounds, some of which were inflicted after death. The body was identified by the dental records.

Lynch had told several witnesses that her husband had gone abroad. However, in court, she testified to killing her husband in self-defence. She testified that the deceased attacked her with a machete and she struggled with him, gothold of the machete and chopped him several times. She said she put the body in her car trunk and then drove to a dirt road where she took out the body, threw gas oil and newspaper on it and lit it.

She was convicted and originally sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, after several appeals, her sentence was reconfigured as she was deemed not a danger to society.