VALDEEN NEPTUNE-SHEARS
“Just give me my son, I don’t need to know how, why or what really happened to him, I just need my son for my peace, for closure,” pleaded a teary-eyed Maureen Hospedales yesterday. Hospedales’ son Claude “Choko” Hospedales, 38, went missing on October 29, 2011 shortly after a gig as a disc jockey at a bar in Santa Flora.
“Justice is for God. I just want closure,” Hospedales said.
Yesterday, as the T&T Guardian sat with Hospedales and other family members at her Beach Road, Palo Seco, home, police activities continued at a pond at Alexander Settlement, Santa Flora.
The pond, which averages about half of a football field, is at the end of the oilfield road which leads into the forest. Police last night said clothing was found as they sifted through mud and will return to the scene today. On Friday, police supervised the draining of the pond and that exercise continued on Saturday. A backhoe was still parked at the site.
Officers at the scene on Saturday said that the exercise was in no way related to any murder case. But yesterday there was a buzz of activity as crime scene unit investigators, some dressed in white and one in a blue coverall, wearing rubber boots, descended into the muddy pond, with shovels as they began their detailed search.
In a marked police vehicle, a civilian sat in the backseat, guarded by two police officers. Two brown bags were gathered near a tree with items believed to have been recovered from the pond.
Claude’s mother said she only heard about the exercise through the grapevine after the airing of the CNC3’s Evening News on Saturday.
She said she was contacted by a relative who asked if the news was related to their missing son. While she said the family has lost all hope for justice they pray that his remains are discovered. She said the police has not contacted her about the recent activity.
The certified geriatric caregiver said it took three years and the death of her mother for her to accept that her only son was not coming home. She said he had visited her in a dream reassuring her that he was ok and was now with the Lord.
It was harder, she said, accepting the death of her 80-year-old mother, “she grieved to death you know. She had no medical conditions. For three years she waited, looking at the door for Choko to come home. She suddenly became ill and in three months she died.”
“Choko was her heart. He grew up with her from baby. She was just as much his mother as I was,” she said.
An emotional Hospedales recalled how her daughter, one of the last persons to have seen Choko alive grew fearful and would tell the family that she felt as though someone was always listening to her. Three years after his disappearance Hospedales returned to her profession as a caregiver and found the strength to start her own business.
Mystery though still surrounds what happened on that fateful day. Hospedales said for years the family got several conflicting reports. Eyewitnesses, she claimed visited the police station and gave statements but all to no avail. The investigating officers as far as she knows were all transferred out of that station within that same year.
The mother said her son had an altercation with a villager over a parcel of land. She returned the $5,000 downpayment to the villager after her son went missing. Additionally, she said that her son had been complaining for weeks about outstanding payments for DJ gigs he had done at a bar in Santa Flora.
Claude was the father of three — two girls and one boy.