By Leroy Smith

FORMER police sergeant Colin Bailey will be appearing in court on Wednesday for the murder of his one-time former lover, businesswoman Sirmattie Ramnaress, who was found murdered in her home at Diamond, East Bank Demerara on August 31, 2013.Police Crime Chief, Senior Superintendent Wendell Blanhum, confirmed to the Guyana Chronicle that the woman’s husband, a former policeman who was interdicted for corrupt practices, would face the charge of murder.

The charge comes after persons who were already picked up by the police last year, and who provided statements to the police, indicated that they were paid by the man to murder the woman. On the day the woman was found murdered, the policeman was performing presidential duties.
He used that as an alibi, which at the time threw police off course, even though they had taken samples from him to be tested overseas, after uplifting same from the murder scene.

After the police picked up a young man and charged him for the murder last year, Bailey told one section of the media, “I had a feeling all the time, because I knew that I was not part of it. I knew some time it would all come to light.”

Last year, two years after the murder, the police managed to crack the case, which was slowly heading to the cold case file. That development was among several other high-profile murders and other crimes which the police were investigating.

On the day the woman’s body was found, persons said they had seen her earlier in the yard tending to her plants. They admitted that the woman might have been murdered by persons whom she had known as there were no signs of forced entry into her premises.

The policeman was placed under close arrest in connection with the matter, but due to several circumstances, the police were forced to release him.

He had even engaged this publication at one point to plead his innocence of the crime, and had said that he had nothing to do with it.

Police could not locate the footage for the cameras which are situated all around the woman’s house, as the person(s) who had invaded the premises and killed the woman had removed them. The policeman was on record as encouraging his colleagues to try and obtain a backup to the surveillance footage, but the ranks failed in that regard.

Added to that, there were attempts to burn the house down with the woman’s body inside, and it was as a result of that act that persons who lived close to where the woman lived knew that something was wrong, and they jumped the fence, entered the home, and found the woman dead.