Garth RattrayI WAS elated to learn that after retiring for just two hours last week Tuesday, a jury in a Home Circuit Court found 40-year-old Rupert Wallace, 20-year-old Rohan Masters and 32-year-old Howard Lindsay guilty of the murder of Mrs. Sylvia Edwards. The news media routinely referred to Sylvia as a '48 year-old businesswoman/gas station operator'. If you didn't know Sylvia, you may have envisioned a tough-as-nails, mundane woman who supervised a business. Things could not be further from the truth.
Sylvia was a little older than I but we attended the Greenwich Primary school around the same time. We became reacquainted when she and her family chose me as their doctor. She was a very kind, considerate and gentle soul, who showed compassion to many, respected everyone and cared deeply for her family. She was a fairly small woman with a gentle smile. She and Errol, her husband of 28 years, raised three exceptional daughters all of whom resembled their mother both physically and behaviourally. The family worshipped at the Stella Maris Church for more than 15 years.
She kept herself in good health. I discovered that she possessed great spiritual faith and uncommon bravery when she submitted fearlessly to a series of medical investigations aimed at elucidating a worrisome finding on one of her annual physical examinations. Her remark amid uncertainty was, "God knows best". Sylvia was always thinking of others even when she herself was not well. She would take the time to inquire after the health of my family and relatives. My mother taught her in school and she always made certain to ask after her health.
I understand that on that fateful morning of Monday July 31, 2000, she was running an errand along Red Hills Road when a group of men travelling in a black Mitsubishi Lancer motor car kidnapped her. She had been trailed from her Plantation Heights home, intercepted and abducted. A ransom of $200,000 was demanded for her safe return. The police intercepted some of the people involved in the ransom plot, they were interrogated but unfortunately investigations eventually led the police to Sylvia's partially nude and decomposing body with gunshot wounds to the head on August 1. It was buried in a shallow grave at University Heights, St. Andrew. The police said it appeared as if she had been strangled then shot.
The dastardly abduction/murder saga would claim two more lives before justice was served. One of the suspects, taxi driver Shem Rowe, was fatally shot on September 30, 2001, a few weeks after he was granted bail. He had agreed to co-operate with the authorities and for this he was murdered. Even more horrendous was the brazen murder of Sylvia's brother-in-law (her husband's brother) the day before he was scheduled to give evidence in his sister-in-law's kidnap and murder case. He was gunned down in broad daylight at a bus stop on a busy thoroughfare. He was shot in his head at about 3:45 p.m. mere metres from his workplace, the same gas station that Sylvia and her husband managed. The murderer escaped on a motorcycle.
It has been a nightmarish two and a half years for the Edwards family and to a lesser extent the entire country. Her husband, Errol, lost a wife and a brother, her children lost their mother. Jamaica lost a decent, honest and kind human being. Many people lost hope in the future and everyone lost faith in a country already infested with crime and violence.
In their heightened emotional state, some blamed the police for not having in place clear-cut procedures for handling ransom situations. But the way things played out it is extremely likely that she would have been killed anyway. Five men were originally charged with her murder but only three came to trial as two were killed, one was silenced on September 30, 2001, by his former partners in crime and the other on December 13, 2002, while attempting extortion on a construction site on Braemar Avenue.
During 2000, 887 people were murdered. Of that amount, 477 - just over 50 per cent of the cases - were solved. Now we know of at least one case in which the perpetrators were brought to justice and sentenced to life in prison, thanks to the diligent work of the police force. With each conviction we will send the message that crime will not go unpunished. Now at last there can be a modicum of closure to the whole Sylvia Edwards affair.
Dr Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice.
