Eight of the men accused of murdering businesswoman Vindra Naipaul-Coolman almost a decade ago, were yesterday acquitted at the end of the longest and most expensive trial in this country’s history.
It took a 12-member jury sitting in the Port-of-Spain Second Criminal Court four hours to review the evidence presented in the trial over the past two years, before returning not guilty verdicts for twin brothers Shervon and Devon Peters, and their older brother Dwayne Gloster, siblings Keida and Jamille Garcia, Marlon Trimmingham, Ronald Armstrong and Antonio Charles.
Two of their co-accused Trimmingham’s brother Earl and Lyndon Charles—were not as lucky, though, as the jury could not decide on a unanimous verdict for both men, forcing presiding Judge Malcolm Holdip to order them to be retried.
As the jury foreman informed Holdip of their decisions yesterday, muffled screams and cries of relief were heard from the accused men’s family and friends who packed the public gallery to capacity.
While some of the accused men wept openly and muttered silent prayers, Earl Trimmingham and Charles had dejected looks on their faces. In a showing of solidarity, each of the freed men patted their former co-accused on their shoulders as they were being led out of the court.
Yesterday’s legal victory was mixed, however, as only one of the eight—Devon Peters—was immediately released and allowed to greet jubilant relatives outside the Hall of Justice on Knox Street.
The T&T Guardian understands the other men were not immediately released due to an administrative error in their criminal tracing, which incorrectly stated they were still awaiting trial for Naipaul-Coolman’s kidnapping. The remaining men are expected to be released from the Port-of-Spain State Prison once the error is corrected this morning.
The mix-up caused panic among their relatives, who were confused by the sight of Peters alone emerging from the court.
“How come he get out and not the others? What going to happen to them now?” one woman said anxiously before her relative’s defence attorneys explained the issue.
In a brief interview after embracing his father for the first time in almost ten years, Peters said he was happy and relieved that “justice was served” in the case.
“I just want to put this whole thing behind me and start thinking about how to start over my life,” Peters whisperered to media personnel.
Peters’ father, Anthony Gloster, whose other sons, Shervon (Devon’s twin brother) and Dwayne Gloster, were also acquitted by the jury, was left almost speechless by the verdict.
“I always knew they were innocent. I just want to hug my boys tight right now,” a teary-eyed Gloster said.
Naipaul-Coolman was abducted from her home at Radix Road, Lange Park, Chaguanas, on December 19, 2006. A $122,000 ransom was paid by her family but she was not released and her body has never been found.
The high profile trial had been postponed several times in the past as the accused men were unable to retain attorneys to defend them.
Jury selection began almost three years ago after the Legal Aid and Advisory Authority instituted a special arrangement where $45,000 a month was allocated to retain both an advocate and instructing attorney for each accused.
The trial initially began with 12 accused men but was reduced after Allan “Scanny” Martin was shot dead after staging a daring prison break in Port-of-Spain in July last year. Joel Fraser was on trial until January this year, when Holdip upheld a no case submission from his attorneys, who claimed the State had presented insufficient evidence linking him to the crime.
Hostile witness hurt case
Since starting presenting evidence in the trial in March 2014, prosecutors had claimed Naipaul-Coolman was held captive in a red brick house at Upper La Puerta, Diego Martin, shared by Shervon and Devon Peters and their brother Dwayne Gloster, before she was killed, dismembered and her body disposed of.
They relied on the evidence of their main witness Keon Gloster, who was allegedly present at the time of her murder but did not participate.
However, Gloster was declared a hostile witness after he repeatedly claimed to be coerced by police into implicating the accused men, most of whom he is related to.
In his sworn statements, which were tendered into evidence, Gloster had allegedly told police that three days after Christmas he went to the house where he saw all the accused men surrounding the former Xtra Foods chief executive, who was sitting on a pool table.
Gloster claimed that James was interrogating her about her family’s failure to pay a larger ransom, when he drew a gun and shot her in the chest before inviting his co-accused to assist him in dismembering her with a rotary saw and burying her body parts in a forested area of the community.
Besides his claims of coercion, defence attorneys also alleged that Gloster, who has epilepsy, was on a cocktail of medication which would have made him “suggestible.”
The pool table was also a major source of contention, as it was not produced in court and several crime scene investigators, who inspected it weeks after her murder, said they did not notice anything suspicious about it.
While all the accused men denied any wrongdoing in their interviews with police months after Naipaul-Coolman’s disappearance, Earl Trimmingham admitted to seeing her when she was taken to the community but denied participating in her murder.
In addition to Gloster’s evidence, prosectors also relied on a roll of duct tape and a pair of latex gloves which were allegedly recovered by police in and around the red brick house.
The items were sent to a laboratory in England for testing and Naipaul-Coolman’s DNA was found on both. Defence attorneys argued that both items could have been planted by police and neither had any fingerprints on DNA samples which were linked to the accused men.
Although prosecutors admitted they had no evidence linking the men to the businesswoman’s abduction, they presented a gun allegedly found in Keida Garcia’s house, which was linked to spent shells recovered on the scene of the kidnapping.
Garcia’s mother, Rita, the only witness called by the accused men, claimed the gun was found by police while she and her son were being questioned by their colleagues outside.
She acknowledged that she signed the search warrant which stated the gun had been found in the search but claimed to have not read it thoroughly. Prosecutors were also forced to admit that one of the officers who allegedly found the gun had been accused of fabricating evidence in an unrelated drug trafficking case in the past.