Dr William Valentine ‘Billy’ Herbert Jr. LLB, PhD, three-times ambassador for St Kitts and Nevis, which are a tiny (101 square miles) pair of islands situated between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, set sail in his 24ft motorboat, Maxi II, on 19 June 1994. There were six other people on board – his wife, Cheryl, four men and a 6-year-old child – and they were ostensibly on an unremarkable fishing trip. They had not told anybody where they intended to fish, and when a coastguard saw the boat leave the harbour at 7.40 that morning, the weather was moderately rough, with swells of between 4ft and 6ft
The boat – built by the American company ‘Welcraft’ in 1984 – had been well maintained, and the two recently fitted 150 h. p. Mercury outboard engines had been reconditioned. They were fed by a single fuel line from a 100-gallon tank. So far, so good. At one time a radio had been fitted in the boat, but this had been taken out by Dr Herbert and not replaced; instead, the crew had two hand-held radios with, at best, a range of 8–10 miles. What happened regarding radio transmissions was highly confusing, but it seems certain that at 2.30 pm, one of the crew, Michael Blake, called the coastguard base on Channel 6 – the emergency channel – asking the coastguard to change to Channel 14, the channel open to anyone; and although the coastguard did so, he heard nothing more. It was initially thought possible that the Maxi II might have encountered engine trouble rather than criminal activity. In any event, Blake, who ran a boat chartering company, had good reason to return by 3.00 pm, since he had a booking at that time. His wife tried to contact him by radio, but without success, and raised the alarm.
The US coastguard, the French Marine Rescue, the Dutch air-sea rescue patrol and a Venezuelan naval aircraft, plus a whole convoy of aircraft, helicopters and boats, swept the area, covering 250,000 square miles and looking for signs of wreckage; they found nothing. Matters were made considerably more difficult by a mist coming down which lasted for several days.
Experts were hired to plot the pattern of wind and currents and try to ascertain where the boat might have drifted to, and the wife of one of the missing men offered a $50,000 reward for information – but still, nothing.
So had there been some kind of tragic accident – or something else? Since Billy Herbert was a controversial figure in the island’s politics, having raised PAM (the People’s Action Movement), the ruling right-wing party, and been previously investigated by the FBI, who suspected him of laundering drug profits on behalf of the IRA, ‘something else’ was considered more likely than a freak accident.
Although the islands had gained independence in 1983, it was requested that Scotland Yard should investigate, because they were part of the British Commonwealth with the Queen as head of state.
On 22 July 1994, Detective Superintendent Alex Ross from the Murder Squad travelled the 4,114 miles from London to St Kitts’ capital, Basseterre, and commenced his investigations. Joining the Met in 1964, Ross had accrued a wealth of experience, working in some of London’s toughest areas, as well as in postings with the Serious Crime Squad, the Regional Crime Squad, the Complaints Branch and the 3 Area Major Investigation Pool, before arriving at SO1 Department in 1993.
Over one month had elapsed since the boat’s disappearance, and few statements had been taken. Certainly, the case had been the subject of a great deal of discussion amongst the islanders, but memories had become confused and some matters which may have started as rumours had now become ‘fact’. There was also a general unwillingness among the islanders to talk to the local police. It would have been helpful if enquiries had been made to ascertain where and when Dr Herbert had purchased his fuel, and how much, to give an approximate idea of what was in his tank; then an idea of the boat’s range could have been ascertained.
But Ross had not been called to try to solve a missing persons case; what he needed to resolve was if criminality had been involved in the boat’s disappearance. For a criminal act to have succeeded, there were several things which the perpetrators would have needed:
1. To know at what time the Maxi II was due to leave the harbour.
2. To (a) follow them to the fishing ground or (b) know where they were headed.
3. To be able to approach the Maxi II without arousing suspicion.
4. To be able to dispose of all six persons on board and the boat without leaving any trace of either.
5. To be certain that their intended target(s) were, in fact, on board.
It did seem improbable, therefore, that the disappearance was the result of a criminal act; but if it had been, then it would have required a highly sophisticated conspiracy, something not within the capabilities of local gangsters – ‘de Yout’ as they were locally referred to – but perhaps carried out by the mafia, the Colombian drug cartels or those acting on their behalf.
Therefore, the officers needed to thoroughly research the background, the correspondence and the bank accounts of the missing persons, to uncover any possible motive and try to establish any justification for the murder of six people. All of the families were eager to help, save one: Herbert’s daughter, Maxine, flatly refused permission for the police, be they local or from Scotland Yard, to examine her father’s correspondence, telling them that she would provide answers to their questions. The officers felt that her answers were disingenuous. A letter signed by Ross was delivered to her by hand on 29 July; it was forwarded to the family solicitor. There followed a four-day public holiday on the island, during which time, on 3 August, Ross returned to London, and Ms Herbert took herself – and the rest of the family – off to Antigua, where her parents had a second home and Dr Herbert had business interests in the form of a bank and a lawyer’s practice. And that was the finish of any consultation between Ms Herbert, her solicitor and Scotland Yard; not that it had really started.
So, unable to solve the conundrum of Maxi II, Ross would later say, ‘The Maxi II and all aboard have disappeared without trace. There is nothing at this stage to tell us whether it was an act of God or a criminal act’ – and that, for the time being, was that. Recommendations were made to the local police force: in the event of a suspicious death, the need to appoint an experienced detective as senior investigating officer (SIO) and a deputy to the SIO, to photograph the scene, obtain written statements from witnesses and background information on the deceased, to set up an incident room and record all messages – in fact, the bread and butter of a major investigation that every police constable walking the streets of Britain would be aware of. Unfortunately, giving that advice was rather like pissing in the wind.
* * *
But it was not too long before Ross was recalled to St Kitts. It appeared that the islands’ sugar and fishing industries were being replaced with the importation of drugs, because on 24 September 1994, fishermen searching for turtles’ eggs discovered one metric tonne of cocaine buried in the sand on a beach at Grange Bay, near the town of Cayon. The cache was wrapped in one-kilo blocks, and they were packed in fibre sacks. This discovery was not reported to the authorities, but its existence was spread by word of mouth. Two days later, one of the fishermen and a friend returned to the site, retrieved two or three of the fibre sacks (containing some sixty blocks of cocaine) and took them back to their homes, where they buried them.
Just before dusk the same day, four men drove to the site; they dug up all of the remaining sacks and carried them to their vehicle. The leader of the group was 38-year-old Dean Morris, one of the three sons of the island’s Deputy Prime Minister, 59-year-old Sidney Morris.
About half the sacks had been loaded on to Morris’ vehicle when car lights were seen approaching, and Morris and his companions fled; however, it’s highly likely that his vehicle was spotted leaving the scene, and even more likely that the car lights belonged to those who had imported the drugs.
Dean Morris took the drugs to the house that he shared with his brothers, 31-year-old David and Vincent, aged thirty-six. The drugs were stored in a shed, David and Vincent were told about them, and Dean and David said they thought the best course of action would be to store the cocaine for several years, then dispose of it gradually. But Vincent decided that it would be far better to sell it immediately, and the following day, he sold several kilos in Basseterre. This, it transpired, was a huge mistake.
One of the potential customers whom Vincent unwittingly approached turned out to be the owner of the cache. The gang member requested a ‘test purchase’ to see if the cocaine was the real McCoy; it was, in every sense of the word. The packaging and identifying marks revealed the drugs as the gang’s, and the following day, Vincent Morris unwillingly accepted an invitation from Glenroy ‘Bobo’ Matthew to accompany him to a house at Frigate Bay. The property was occupied by Charles ‘Little Nut’ Miller – originally known as Patrick O’Connor or Cecil Connor – who had been serving life sentences for two murders in Jamaica before escaping. Also present were Clifford Henry, Noel ‘Zambo’ Heath and two Colombians. The men were part of a gang strongly suspected of drug dealing on an industrial scale and considered highly dangerous; it was said that two other Colombians who had been employed to watch over the cache of cocaine on the beach, and who had failed dismally in their duties, had been duly executed.
Vincent was interrogated regarding the whereabouts of the rest of the drugs and he agreed to return them. The gang were not particularly surprised that he had capitulated; but what they were not aware of was that he had covertly recorded the conversation by means of a hidden micro cassette recorder.
So by the end of the meeting, matters appeared fairly amicable. Morris, who employed Matthew at St Kitts Freight Services, offered to falsify documentation so that the drugs could safely pass through the airport and on to Miami, Florida. Taken home by Clifford Henry, Vincent disclosed the whereabouts of the rest of the cocaine, which was duly retrieved; but this reclamation was discreetly filmed on his video camcorder. Therefore, it appeared that Vincent was by now working with Miller’s gang to smuggle the cocaine into the United States. He may have been coerced – Henry had been in possession of a pistol – or it may have been of his own volition. But what was clear was that Vincent was playing a very dangerous game indeed.
Because the very next day, at 6.30 am, Vincent arrived home with seven large boxes, each containing 20kg of cocaine. Had he stolen them – or had they been given to him by the gang, to be flown out of St Kitts using forged documentation? Either way, for the rest of the day, Morris’s home telephone was constantly engaged by callers asking his whereabouts, including one who spoke only Spanish. That evening, a vehicle containing four men, one of whom spoke with a Jamaican accent, was outside Morris’ address, and the occupants demanded to know where he was. But Vincent was elsewhere; he was seeking the return of some of the cocaine which had been stolen by an associate, and the following day, it was retrieved, with the aid of a pistol and brother Dean.
By now, it was Friday, 30 September; Vincent Morris together with his girlfriend, 35-year-old Dominican-born Joan Walsh, had rented a white Nissan Sentra, registration number R3973, and that evening he was in possession of a very large quantity of dollars, both East Caribbean and US. It appeared that Miss Walsh was unaware of Morris’ criminal activities; she would subsequently be referred to as one of those unfortunate people who was ‘in the wrong company, at the wrong place at the wrong time’.
The next day, 1 October, was Vincent’s birthday. Having stored the seven boxes of cocaine with an associate, he and Miss Walsh went out to celebrate; but although they were expected at a number of events and locations, they never appeared. Throughout the evening, Miller and his associates were in the Cayon area actively seeking Morris and using a number of vehicles, including a minivan owned by Michael ‘Illa’ Glasford. Various people were asked if they had seen Morris or his rental vehicle. It’s likely that someone had, because it’s believed that the gang caught up with the couple before midnight; it then appeared that they had vanished as completely as Billy Herbert and his crew had, some four months previously.
On Sunday, 2 October, the families of Morris and Miss Walsh reported them missing. There was no major police investigation at the time, but due to the political prominence of the Morris brothers’ father, the islands’ senior detective and head of Special Branch, 38-year-old Superintendent Jude Thaddeus Matthew, was put in charge of investigating the couple’s disappearance.
The following day, Michael Glasford’s minivan was deliberately set alight outside his house. Glasford was an associate of Miller; was this done to obliterate any bloodstains which might have been present? It was a strong possibility, especially when a burnt ‘Michael X’ watch – similar to one worn by Vincent Morris – was found. But the flames had done their job reasonably well, in as much as no further evidence was found.
Glenroy Matthew certainly had good intelligence as to the whereabouts of the seven boxes of cocaine, because he demanded them from Vincent’s associate, who promptly informed Dean Morris. Extremely concerned for his brother’s safety, Dean retrieved the seven boxes and returned them that evening to Clifford Henry, in the hope that this would be a bargaining chip in gaining the release of his kidnapped brother; but matters had gone too far for that.
Meanwhile, between 4 and 10 October 1994, Superintendent Matthew had arrested six men in connection with the couple’s disappearance. Superintendent Ross had already been requested to return to the island, and by the time he arrived in Basseterre on 11 October, the sextet were banged up in four of the island’s police stations. They were Noel Timothy Heath, Charles Emmanuel Miller, Kirt Anthony ‘Ibo’ Hendrickson, Glenroy Wingrove Matthew, Michael Lloyd Senrick Glasford and Clifford Nathaniel Henry. They had been charged, the previous day, with conspiracy to murder Vincent Morris and Miss Walsh. Not all of them had been interviewed, and no formal record was made of those who had.
On 12 October, Ross and his assistant had a meeting with Matthew, who briefed them on the case – it transpired that the same day, Miller had seen Matthew in the holding area and had told him, ‘You’re a dead man tomorrow morning’ – and the two superintendents agreed to meet at Ross’s hotel the following day. Matthew was convinced he had the right people but he had been working virtually alone, and the evidence was weak.
At 7.50 am the following day, Matthew, married with four children, left his home at Franklands driving his Pajero jeep, and as he turned the vehicle towards Basseterre, he was hit and killed by eleven shots from an automatic machine pistol, initially fired from cover, then at point-blank range. The shots were heard by lawyer Constance Mitcham, who had been visiting Matthew’s wife; she saw a man in a black ski mask with a gun and shouted ‘Hey!’, believing he would stop firing if he knew he had been seen. Instead, the gunman fired at her and then, as a bus approached, he fired two shots at it, puncturing a tyre. Several other witnesses saw the incident, and the police were called.
The culprit was 22-year-old David ‘Grizzly’ Lawrence, who had worked for Charles Miller, and he now fled on foot across country. Fortunately, members of the island’s Special Services Unit (SSU) were nearby on an unrelated drugs investigation and were quickly on the scene. Lawrence was pursued to the main island road, near the village of Challengers; he was pointed out to the SSU by the occupants of a vehicle which Lawrence had tried to hijack at gunpoint and was arrested, still in possession of the murder weapon, a Tek-9 automatic pistol, together with a pair of infra-red binoculars and a large knife. The ski mask was found tucked down the side of one of his combat boots; at his home address, three pieces of cloth were found which fitted exactly the holes in the ski mask.
It appeared that Lawrence must have put up some form of resistance when he was being handcuffed: two of his teeth were missing, his forehead was bleeding and there were abrasions on his shoulder, forehead, back and legs; there were also lacerations and swellings on his lips, and one of his ribs was fractured. It was not until 16 October, when he had recovered sufficiently from his injuries, that Ross was able to interview him about the murder. Lawrence freely and fully admitted the murder and did so in a written statement. However, he declined to admit a motive or give the names of anybody else involved in the offence, and he was then charged.
The Met team was supplemented by local officers: three newly qualified detectives, a detective inspector and a typist. However, with Matthew’s murder, the implied threat against Ross was considered so serious that the commander of SO1, Roy Ramm, took the unprecedented step of sending officers from the Met’s elite firearms unit, SO19, plus reinforcements, an inspector, a sergeant and a constable.
The firearms team included the rather controversial officer, Police Constable Tony Long, who during the course of his career shot five men (killing three of them), and added a dog, belonging to a gangster, to his casualty list.
‘Once it became apparent that there wasn’t any real threat against me, the other guys from SO19 mucked in and became part of the investigation team and were extremely enthusiastic to be involved’. Ross told me. However, it was not too long before the threat aspect would change.
As Ross set up offices at the island’s deep water port, Bird Rock, carried out house-to-house enquiries and set up roadblocks, the Democrat newspaper urged anyone with information to contact him, telling their readers, ‘We cannot afford to allow the drug traffickers and gun-runners to take over the land with which God has so richly blessed us.’
Since St Kitts had no forensic facilities other than fingerprint retrieval, all of the forensic exhibits were packaged up and sent to the Metropolitan Police’s Forensic Science Laboratory in London. Formal statements were taken, and the murder investigation was concluded in three weeks.
Ross now turned his attention to the disappearance of Vincent Morris and Miss Walsh. It was necessary to backtrack through the whole enquiry and re-interview witnesses. Even when statements had been obtained by Superintendent Matthew, they had been rushed and lacked depth. As Ross told me, ‘Most of the evidence was in his head.’ As matters stood, there was very little direct evidence to support a charge of conspiracy to murder.
‘He [Matthew] had been working with the DEA [the American Drugs Enforcement Agency] and the CIA [the American Central Intelligence Agency], and covert tapes existed’, Ross told me. ‘Suffice to say, they were never handed to me, and a long drawn-out investigation ensued.’
Deputy Prime Minister Sidney Morris admitted that his sons were engaged in the drugs trade; on 9 November, Ross carried out a search at the home shared by the three Morris brothers. Drugs were found hidden on a nearby beach, and some were buried on a farm. Ross arrested Dean Morris for conspiracy to sell 57kg of cocaine and his brother David for possession of a gun and ammunition; both were bailed (£62,500 in Dean’s case, £1,875 in David’s) to attend court, and one week later, their father tendered his resignation to the Prime Minister, Mr Kennedy Simmonds. Since there had been fierce pressure from opposition parties and business leaders for Mr Morris to step down from posts which included the ministries of education, youth, social affairs and communications, as well as works and public utilities, Morris’s resignation was accepted by the Prime Minister with alacrity; however, he immediately appointed him as ‘special advisor’ to all of the ministries he had vacated.
But the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister’s sons had been granted bail for such serious offences was all the political opposition, the United People’s Party, needed to whip up a vitriolic storm of protest.
The leading agitator was the exotically-named Dr Kuba Omoja Assegai, known to the police of North London by his baptismal name of Sebastian Godwin. He had skipped bail in 1988 after being charged with threatening to murder the Borough of Brent’s director of education. Now the father of ten was back in St Kitts; originally, he had joined the Labour Party, but after its failure in the recent election, he joined the United People’s Party. Hero-worshiping Colonel Gaddafi (‘a great man’) and denying the existence of Christ, Assegai referred to the Police Commissioner, Derrick Thompson, as ‘brain-dead’ and to Alex Ross as ‘The Yard’s Chief Bwana’, who, Assegai claimed, was ‘organising a cover-up’.
It was suggested in an opposition newspaper that Ross had issued 100 diplomatic passports to the Prime Minister and his cronies – including the two Morris brothers – in order that they might flee the islands. On the neighbouring island of Nevis an equally false rumour was circulated that Ross had arrested the manager and chief teller of the St Kitts National Bank.
Two days later, egged on by Labour Party activists – including a lawyer wearing a billboard inciting people to riot – a mob marched through Basseterre, and there was a disturbance at the town’s jail; the inmates set it on fire and all of the 150 prisoners were released for their own safety. Some took the opportunity to escape, but many simply sat on a wall opposite the prison to enjoy the spectacle. Troops from the six neighbouring islands, forty-five members of the Caribbean Security Force, were flown in to restore order and capture the escaped prisoners. Ross now takes up the tale:
However, one of those who escaped was Lawrence, and the local police contacted me to ensure I took extra precautions in case he tried something stupid. We normally went out as a group for our evening meals, but in the light of what was happening, we decided to stay in and eat in the hotel, which was on the outskirts of town. The SO19 guys took their responsibilities very seriously and so in addition to carrying their revolvers, they brought their HKs (Heckler & Koch sub-machine guns) in holdalls to the open-air dining area. Picture the scene: a steel drum band playing for us and other guests, the flames of the burning prison silhouetted against the night sky and us guys dining whilst all this was going on! The next morning, things were very tense and a US cutter had come into harbour. We decided to visit on the off-chance we might have to arrange our evacuation. I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but things were not looking very good by then.
‘Grizzly’ Lawrence surrendered and returned to the jail – ‘Apparently, he believed himself to be safer there’, commented Ross. The British Government made £50,000 available to provide new prison facilities, since the prison was still minus its roof.
But on the day after the riot, 12 November, plantation workers discovered the burnt-out rental Nissan in a cane field on Rawlings Plantation, 20 miles from Basseterre; the remains of Vincent Morris and Joan Walsh were in the back of the vehicle. The fire had been so intense that there was no chance of establishing the cause of death. There was a single bullet hole in the boot of the car, and the burnt remains of a pair of handcuffs and a gold neck chain, later identified as belonging to Vincent Morris.
Ideally, Ross and his team wanted to use tried and tested British methods of evidence gathering: split the cane field into sections and carry out a systematic search for evidence, and leave the bodies and the remains of the car in situ until a scientific examination could be made – Ross had sent for a London pathologist to attend the scene – but the sugar cane was too dense to permit an inch-by-inch search on foot. ‘We approached the US cutter to lift the car out with their helicopter’, Ross told me, although this was unsuccessful.
Worse was to come. The cane field was in the middle of an opposition party stronghold, and word went round that the British officers had planted the bodies there to discredit the opposition.
Due to the fact that a mob several hundred strong was now approaching the cane field and threatening to burn it, members of the Special Services Unit brought the car into town.
The case against the six men charged with conspiracy to murder Vincent Morris and Joan Walsh dragged on until they were eventually granted bail after no attorney from the public prosecutor’s office turned up at court, amidst howls of protest from the Democrat newspaper, who wondered ‘if this was not stage-managed’.
The Met officers felt that there was convincing evidence to prosecute Charles Miller, Noel Heath, Glenroy Matthew and Clifford Henry for drug trafficking; but although the Proceeds of Crime Act 1993 had been passed by the St Kitts and Nevis Parliament, it had never been gazetted. This was quickly corrected, and a number of production and inspection orders under the Act were obtained from the High Court, in an effort to trace monies which had been put through bank accounts held by the four men. Large deposits had been transferred from their accounts to accounts held by their lawyer, Fitzroy Bryant. Further production orders were obtained to search the lawyer’s accounts, whereupon Bryant obtained a High Court writ against the authorities, claiming that the Proceeds of Crime Act was an abuse of human and civil rights. At a subsequent hearing at the High Court it was held that no further action would be taken in respect of those production orders until such time as the matter could be fully heard in court. Couldn’t make it up, could you?
So the four men were charged with conspiracy to import drugs, but there was one delay after another, with a jury being undecided in October 1995 and a further trial being scheduled for January 1996, before that fixture was abandoned and a re-trial was fixed for March 1996.
But in May 1996, the United States filed extradition requests in respect of Miller, Matthew, Heath and Henry for conspiracy to import a tonne of cocaine into the United States.
There were a series of court battles in St Kitts; Henry, believing a court victory in Basseterre was the end of the matter, discovered he was wrong when he tried to enter the United States, was arrested and later sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1998, Miller threatened to kill American students at St Kitts’ Ross Veterinary University if he was extradited, but he didn’t, and he surrendered to be extradited in 2000 – he was convicted on narcotics charges by a Miami jury in December that year and on 13 February 2001 he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the US Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana.
Heath and Matthew were extradited in 2006. The same year, Heath pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the US Federal Narcotics Laws and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment; Matthew, after some plea-bargaining, on 29 January 2007 received eleven years and four months’ imprisonment, to be followed by five years supervised release. Officers from the Yard’s Murder Squad had found Vincent Morris’s cassette tape of Matthew and others planning to import cocaine into Miami by aeroplane.
Back now to ‘Grizzly’ Lawrence who, if found guilty, faced the death penalty. He stood trial for the murder of Superintendent Matthew on three occasions; each resulted in a hung jury.
‘It was impossible to find impartial jurors or people who were not afraid of Miller and his associates’, Ross told me. ‘I discussed at length with their Attorney General moving the trial off the island, but they wouldn’t move it.’
During one of the trials of Lawrence for the murder of Superintendent Matthew, a local officer with limited knowledge of the case was put in charge; he ended up giving evidence for the defence. When the jury was sworn in for the final trial, Miller – on bail for the drugs charge – swaggered into court and did his best to intimidate the jurors and the bench by loudly declaiming that the trial was ‘political’ and the accused was innocent. He then proceeded to abuse the appeal judge and also Constance Mitcham, who had witnessed the shooting and was due to give evidence at the trial. Not one local police officer did anything to stop, eject or arrest him.
Fitzroy Bryant – whose bank accounts had been flooded with cash from the drugs deals mounted by Miller, Heath, Matthew and Henry – was one of the lawyers who appeared for Lawrence’s defence. He alleged that when Lawrence was arrested ‘he was given a good beating’ by the SSU officers, a claim denied ‘with some consistency’ by the officers, according to the St Kitts-Nevis Observer. One British forensic scientist gave evidence that samples of Lawrence’s hair were identical with hairs found in the ski mask; Bryant argued that his client was ‘incoherent from the beatings’ and could not have given consent for the samples to be taken. Kevin O’Callaghan, another British scientist, had examined bullets fired from the pistol and told the court that they ‘could not have been fired from the barrel of any other weapon’. Bryant alleged that ‘there had been a substitution of weapons’.
Lawrence was given the choice of either appearing on the witness stand, in which case he could be cross-examined by the prosecution, or making a statement from the dock, in which case he couldn’t. He chose the latter course, saying, ‘I did not shoot Superintendent Jude Matthew. I was not at Franklands on the morning Mr Matthew was killed.’ He went on to suggest he was going to meet a drugs drop-off but when the shipment failed to arrive he encountered the police and, he whined, he had been beaten in the police van and at SSU headquarters. He concluded by saying, ‘The gun the police have in evidence is definitely not my gun.’
Well, sometimes that type of defence wins a case, sometimes not; on this occasion, despite the highly professional way in which the Met had put their case together, Lawrence was freed.
However, in 2002 Lawrence was himself murdered, apparently following an altercation in a nightclub; he was chased out of the club and stabbed to death with knives and an ice pick. Six suspects were arrested (although two were released without charge) and appeared in court, where they were cheered by their fans. One newspaper reporter was so enthusiastic at what she perceived to be the prisoners’ star-status that she wanted her editor’s permission to refer to them as ‘The Fantastic Four’, The four were later acquitted, although two of them, plus three others, were arrested in 2006 for the murder of Michelle Weekes-Benjamin, whose body was found in a septic tank.
So it went on; the islands’ population of 31,800 appeared to be diminishing week by week.
Ross and his team could not be expected to stay forever, and they left the island on 20 January 1995, although other Met officers remained; one month later, the local Commissioner, Derrick Thompson, resigned after two years in the post.
‘The Prime Minister did ask if I would take on the Commissioner’s role’, Ross told me, ‘but that was never going to happen as my family would never have moved.’
For Ross it had been an almost impossible investigation; quite apart from the lack of resources and scientific expertise, the islands were rotten with fear, corruption, political bias and drugs. As long as the Met officers held the reins, good results were forthcoming; they cultivated informants and, out of a spirit of assistance to the local officers, dealt with matters not included in their original remit. One such case was the arrest of a wanted drug trafficker for importing a metric tonne of cocaine from Colombia. The SO19 officers also undertook a training role with local police officers in tactical and practical firearms training.
But in the absence of the Met officers, matters started to crumble once more.
The trials of David and Dean Morris for drug dealing and possessing a firearm were adjourned sine die – in other words, indefinitely.
As always, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office billed the country concerned for employing the Met’s expertise. St Kitts and Nevis were extremely reluctant to tender a prompt payment. Ross retired from the Met in 1995. He travelled backwards and forwards to the islands to give evidence in the trials. By 1996, he had still not been reimbursed for his daily rates; it took a series of faxes to the new Commissioner before the account was settled.
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Noel ‘Zambo’ Heath was released from his four-year sentence having served just two years of it in a US prison and returned home to St Kitts in 2009, to a tumultuous welcome from friends and family. Not everybody was so rapturously inclined towards him, because on Friday, 14 October 2011, he died as the result of multiple gunshot wounds. It was felt in some quarters that he was an informant, and as one observer sagely commented, ‘Snitches get stitches – in Z’s case, bullets.’
Two years later, in August 2014, his son, Zamba ‘Zambi’ Heath, carried on the family tradition when for possession of cocaine and crack cocaine with intent to supply he was fined $75,000. His brother, Marlon Heath, was fined $500 for possession of cannabis.
A few days later, on 1 September 2014, Zambo’s old sparring partner, Kirt ‘Ibo’ Hendrickson – they had both been arrested for conspiring to murder Vincent Morris and Joan Walsh – was shot at Fern Street in the Greenlands community of St Kitts and rushed to the Joseph N. France General Hospital suffering from wounds to his back and arms.
And another contender in the Morris/Walsh conspiracy plot, Michael ‘Illa’ Glasford, was shot dead on 30 June 2015 as he was sitting peacefully on a bench at Dorset Village, Basseterre. ‘Remember’, said the Royal St Christopher and Nevis Police Force, in their quest for information as to the assailant’s identity, ‘you do not have to provide your personal information and you may be eligible to receive a reward’ – but it’s doubtful if anyone spoke up.
In 1989, the then Prime Minister, Kennedy Simmonds, had opened a six-mile-long highway, which was named after him. He stated that two international hotel chains would be building luxury complexes there; but construction never even started. However, it was a useful road, a ‘Gateway to Progress’ as the Prime Minister called it, for the young gangsters – ‘de Yout’ – to drive along to collect their drug imports from Colombia.
On 20 September 2015, Dr the Right Excellent and Right Honourable Sir Kennedy A. Simmonds was elevated to the rank of ‘National Hero’ by the island’s Prime Minister, Dr Timothy Harris.
Eleven days later, following a drugs bust in which one man was shot dead by police, Simmonds’ son, Kenrick ‘Rico’ Simmonds, was one of three later convicted in St Kitts on 11 February 2017 on seven charges, including importation of drugs; he was fined $300,000 and given five months to pay, or face four years’ imprisonment. He had been on bail throughout the proceedings. The sentence having been described in the press as ‘a slap on the wrist’, the Director of Public Prosecutions said he was considering an appeal.
It looked very much like a case of ‘business as usual’.
* * *
Which really brings us full circle to where Alex Ross’ investigations commenced, with the disappearance of ‘Billy’ Herbert.
He must have been an industrious lawyer and politician indeed to have left an estate valued at $20 million, and he would have made enemies, not only in the IRA but among those clients for whom he laundered the proceeds of drug trafficking from his office in Anguilla, because he had given their details to the authorities. This, it appeared, was after he was confronted with his misdeeds as a money launderer; in consequence, the authorities had been able to freeze those clients’ accounts in the bank across the street, in which Herbert had a financial interest.
There was also a very strong rumour that Herbert, plus the rest of the fishing party, were buried under a swimming pool in St Kitts. Well, if that’s the case, it would be easy to check the detailed planning applications, which I feel sure would have been scrupulously filed with Basseterre’s Borough Council, to determine which swimming pools were under construction at the time of the fishing party’s disappearance.
That is, if anybody wanted to.