JUSTICE Navindra Singh handed a 100-year sentence to Collin Allen, called Colis Williams or ‘Bonus’, after a 12-member jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict yesterday (Tuesday, February 26, 2019), at the Demerara High Court.
The 26-year-old man was charged with the murder of an elderly woman at her Montrose home.

According to the indictment, on August 1, 2015, the accused murdered Danrasie Ganesh called ‘Carmen’, who lived alone, at Lot 121 Public Road, East Coast Demerara.
On the day in question, Allen allegedly entered the house as if he lived there, and proceeded to murder the 77-year-old woman.
The murder was caught on CCTV cameras that were in the house.
The young man was adamant that the man on camera wasn’t him and he was innocent of the crime committed.

However, it was reported that Allen confessed to the crime when he was detained back in 2015, alleging that he was paid some $700,000 by ‘a man’, to commit the act, and retrieve some documents from the house.
During the trial, former Inspector of Police, Cedric Gravesande, testified that, in 2015, he was the officer-in-charge of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) at the Sparendaam Police Station.

The senior officer told the court that on August 22, 2015, he was at CID Headquarters, Eve Leary, at about 12:50hrs, when he was handed a `caution statement’ in favour of the accused.

Gravesande said he read the document, approached the accused and identified himself as a police officer, dressed in plain clothes, and requested to take the accused to the crime scene. The accused, he told the court, replied “Yes, I gon tek you”.
The accused was taken to the crime scene, accompanied by a party of ranks, and he (the accused) pointed to a southern gate and said: “Offica dis is the gate I met the man and we talked before I went into the house.”

Gravesande said that he then noticed a parked silver-grey Spacio, PMM 4949, and the accused said that it was the same car he was in when he talked to the ‘man’.
The former cop stated that the accused told him that he then picked up a bar and went into the house, and they followed him.

Gravesande said that he made checks in the places pointed out by the accused. The accused took them back downstairs, where, he said, he met the deceased and dealt her several lashes and she fell unconscious to the floor.

The witness added, that the accused told him that he picked up some documents and handed it to the ‘man’ he had spoken to earlier, then went back into the house and ransacked the lower flat before leaving the place.
During the trial, the footage taken from the CCTV cameras in the house where the elderly woman was murdered, was shown to the court.

Allen held out that the man in the video wasn’t him.
The video of his interrogation was also shown in court, and again, Allen denied that the man in the video was him.
Defence attorney, Rachel Bakker, said that the accused was at his Timehri home at the time of the incident, as was said by his mother during her testimony.

But State Prosecutor, Tuanna Hardy, pointed to the fact that the address given by the mother and the address given by the accused were different.
Hardy also highlighted that the mother of the accused could not say when her son was detained, which suggests that he wasn’t at her house when he was taken away.
Bakker also argued that her client said he was threatened by a ‘Detective Caesar’, to admit to the crime.

But referencing the video footage of his interrogation, Hardy highlighted that no aggression was used towards Allen to make a confession.
In fact, after the caution statement was read back to him, he agreed to everything that was read.

After three hours in deliberation, the jury returned with the unanimous verdict. The defence attorney refused to prepare a plea of mitigation, and therefore the judge proceeded with the sentencing.

Allen continued to plead his innocence but the judge reminded him of the footage that was shown in court, and said to him: “you shouldn’t see day light because of your actions.”
Starting at a 60-year sentence, Justice Singh added an additional 40 years for a series of aggravating factors, totalling 100 years imprisonment.

Just the day before his verdict and sentencing, the accused said to his weeping mother outside of the court room, “Don’t worry ma, your son coming home. I would never kill nobody mama.”

When his sentence was handed down, he took it calmly, bowed his head, and walked out of the court with the escorting officers.