Georgetown: Nearly four years after a 41-year-old businesswoman and her two young sons were murdered, a suspect has been apprehended by police over the weekend, and has confessed to committing the gruesome act.
Identified as a resident of Uitvlugt, West Coast Demerara (WCD), the man was once neighbour to the now dead woman.
In 2012, Jennifer Persaud, the owner of a liquor store and bar at Lot 67, Anna Catherina, WCD, and her sons Afridi Bacchus, six, and Jadon Persaud, 18 months, were discovered dead in their home.
She was a mother of six and her eldest daughter is now 25 years old.
Post-mortem examinations revealed that the woman was stabbed about her upper chest, lower neck, and upper arms about 10 times. Her six-year-old son’s throat was slashed and his windpipe was severed, while the baby was stabbed to the left shoulder and the carotid artery was severed.
It is believed that a knife of long blade was used in the attack.
Investigators disclosed that the suspect was apprehended after his reputed wife visited the police station to make a domestic violence report against him. After making the report, she also expressed fear for her life, citing the fact that her lover had previously committed murder.
Having sparked the interest of the police during further questioning, she hinted that the detectives should interrogate him about the murder of a businesswoman and her two children that occurred in Anna Catherina.
Police acted on the information and apprehended the suspect, who, after being confronted with the allegation, eventually gave a detailed statement and tour of the home, explaining the sequence of events that led to the murder.
The dead woman’s first cousin, Mark Jetto, who now controls the property, related that he is finally relieved to have some closure over the entire affair.
He expressed his desire for overdue justice for his murdered cousin, with whom he had had a sisterly relationship. Jetto was present when the police brought the suspect to the home to explain his actions leading up to the murder. He said the suspect was once Jennifer Persaud’s neighbour, and on the fatal night of Friday, September 21, 2012, he jumped the fence, entered her property and business premises from the rear 
entrance through a wooden back door that was forced open.
The suspect then made his way into the business premises, where he broke into a money container inside a room on the lower flat. He then ventured to the upper flat through an inside staircase.
“When the police bring this man upstairs and the inspector ask he is which room he killed the woman and children in, the man pointed to the room. Meh start to scream, “In here bai!” is like ah lose my senses,” Jetto explained.
Jetto, who has had the property under his control since his cousin’s death, had never tampered with the crime scene, leaving everything in the upper flat as they were since the murder occurred almost four years ago.
At the grisly scene, Jetto pointed to the blood-stained floor in the bedroom almost in tears. “Meh just come here one year now, nobody did anything to the place other than pigeons living inside, and I reopened a business.”
Reflecting what the suspect told the police, Jetto said: “He tell the police he come to take some money from downstairs and didn’t come fuh kill she. After he take the money from the box downstairs, it was too little money, so he decided to come up upstairs to see if he could get more money.”
Jetto continued: “After he come upstairs now and he pass Jennifer room, she jump up and she holler for he. He tell the police that he run to she and start stabbing she. She little son (Afridi Bacchus) wake up and scramble he foot, and he look down at the boy and slit his throat. She then fall back and reached onto the bed where her baby son was. He continued to attack her on the bed, stabbing wildly. This caused her baby who was on the bed to be stabbed. All three died that night.”
The relative further said he had loaned Jennifer Persaud a substantial amount of cash to construct the home and business, and the money was on the bed at the time of the killing. Jetto said the suspect, after fleeing the crime scene with the cash, decided to party lavishly.
He said at first he had suspected the stepfather of the children as the one who had committed the crime. “I had to apologise to the man because it was not him.”
Jetto described the suspect as a “useless drug user”. Expressing a sigh of relief, Jetto said he had almost given up on the case, thinking that the murder would be one of the many unsolved cases in Guyana.
“Now I will clean up the place, since the murderer will face justice before the court.”
The prime suspect in the triple homicide had been Persaud’s 23-year-old partner and the father of her youngest child. He, along with a relative of his, had been taken into custody but were both subsequently released due to insufficient evidence.
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