AFTER spending the last five years on remand, Phillip Suffrein was, on Thursday, freed after the prosecution disclosed that it did not have any evidence linking him to the murder of two elderly women in 2017.

Suffrein, 28, of Albouystown, Georgetown, was on trial before Justice Jo-Ann Barlow and a 12-member jury at the Demerara High Court.

He had denied murdering Constance Fraser, 89, and Phylis Caesar, 77, between October 2 and 3, 2017, during the course of a robbery at their South Road and Albert Street house in Georgetown.

When the case was called on Thursday, the state prosecutors offered no evidence against Suffrein.

Justice Barlow asked the jury to return a not guilty verdict against Suffrein since the state failed to establish that Suffrein was connected to the two elderly women’s murders.

Suffrein was represented by attorney-at-law Madan Kissoon

In 2017, Suffrein was charged jointly with Imran Khan called ‘Christopher Khan’, and Steven Andrews for the capital offence.

However, in 2019, Khan and Andrews confessed to the crimes at the High Court and were sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after serving 35 years.

The Guyana Chronicle had reported that the two pensioners were found lying face down in separate bedrooms at their home on October 3, 2017, with their hands and feet bound and mouths gagged.

According to a relative, the house was ransacked and quite a few items appeared to be missing. Reports from the police revealed that a door to the upper half of the two-flat building was breached.

Relatives said it was the third time the women had been robbed, with one recalling that during the last incident, the intruders had made off with cellular phones and money.

It was also the second time the elderly women had been robbed after receiving their monthly pensions.

Government Pathologist, Dr. Nehaul Singh gave the cause of death of both women as asphyxiation due to suffocation and manual strangulation, compounded by trauma to the head.