– as new details of crime emerge

By Neil Marks

THE Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo barber who confessed to the September 2012 murders of Anna Catherina liquor store owner Jennifer Persaud and her two young sons was formally charged yesterday, as new details emerged about how he had carried out the gruesome crime.He confessed to the murders after his reputed wife, who suffered humiliating abuse and threats of murder, went to the police to report him, and had advised them to question him about the Anna

Catherina murders.

Abishai Caesar, 31, appeared before Magistrate Rochelle Liverpool and was read the charges, but was not required to plead. Caesar, who lived in a shack on government reserve aback the Tuschen Housing Scheme, was also charged with assault causing actual bodily harm, and using threatening language against his reputed wife.

He pleaded not guilty to the abuse charge, but guilty to the charge of threatening language. However, when the magistrate read him the police details that he had stripped his wife naked and had threatened to kill her and chop her head off, he denied some of the details, so the magistrate entered a not guilty plea on his behalf and remanded him until May 1st.

The Guyana Chronicle has learnt that Caesar had once engaged in a discussion about the murders with his friends, who were having a conversation about the cruelty being witnessed in society.

One of those friends said Caesar had spoken of the murders, recounting seeing a bloodied room after the event, and pinning the murders on the man the businesswoman was living with at the time.

On the very night he had committed the murders, Caesar’s reputed wife told the Guyana Chronicle, he had told her that he needed money and so had gone to the

house to steal, but the woman was awakened by his search and he had had to kill her, along with her two young sons.

At the court yesterday morning, Rasheed Bacchus, the father of six-year-old Afridi Bacchus who had been murdered, said he was relieved that the truth has come to light, but he wants to see justice done.

He had always suspected that the businesswoman’s new husband was behind the killings, and had felt justice had not been done after he was questioned by police and released.

“I wanted God to show up the truth, but the court is Mankind’s judgement; I want him to face the Almighty’s judgement,” Bacchus told the Guyana Chronicle.

Separated from his wife, Bacchus had moved to the East Coast Demerara to live, along with his son. The boy was at his mother’s house for the school vacation, and was due to return home for school the following week, but that was not to be.

The businesswoman’s parents, Sankhoari and Kumar Persaud, broke down in tears at the court. They had lived with the pain of not knowing exactly who had murdered their daughter and their two grandsons; and had also blamed their daughter’s new husband, with whom she had her last son, 18-month-old Jadon Persaud, who was also murdered.

They’d kept in close contact with their daughter, but had never known of Caesar. They had never seen him next door when they had visited their daughter’s house.

On the day of the murders, they had sent another of their younger grandsons to the house to uplift some chickens. He had returned to say that there was no answer at the house. Mrs Persaud said she kept calling her daughter on the phone, but there was no reply, and she found that very strange. In the evening, Mr Persaud

arrived home, and his ‘gut’ told him something was wrong, as it was not like his daughter to not let them know of her whereabouts.

Mr Persaud said he decided to call the police to go with him to the house. When they arrived, they asked neighbours if they knew where their daughter was or if they had noticed anything strange. No one knew anything. Caesar was not among the persons they had asked, as the house he lived in was closed.

When they decided to go into the house, Mr Kumar found his daughter lying on the floor with the older of the two boys across her chest. He said he grabbed his daughter’s feet, and he felt they were stiff and cold. He knew right away she was dead, so was the boy lying across her chest.

They then looked for the 18-month-old, but could not find him. Then, when they decided to unfold the mosquito net from the bed, they discovered the boy’s body with a stab wound to his neck.

“My heart feel so relieved,” Mrs Persaud told the Guyana Chronicle. “I feel I get justice.”

Caesar’s reputed wife told the Guyana Chronicle that she’d kept the murders to herself for all these years because Caesar had threatened to kill her and her family if she ever were to squeal on him. The couple has a two-year-old daughter.

The woman said she decided to go to the police because she felt that Caesar would make good on his promise, and she had to make an escape for the sake of her life and that of her daughter.