Georgetown: A man who killed a businesswoman and her two son after robbing them of $3,000 in their Anna Catherina, West Coast Demerara home in 2012, received three death sentences on Wednesday.
Abishai Caesar, 36, formerly of Tuschen Housing Scheme, East Bank Essequibo, was sentenced by trial Judge Sandil Kissoon. In May, Caesar was convicted by a 12-member jury on the three counts of murder.
The facts of the case were that sometime between September 21-22, 2012, at Sea View Anna Catherina, he murdered 41-year-old Persaud called ‘Jenny’ and her two children, namely Afridi Bacchus, 6, and Jadon Ernest, 17 months.
Caesar was represented by attorney-at-law Rachael Bakker, while the State was represented by prosecutor Lisa Cave.
On Wednesday, a probation report was read in court, which stated that Caesar was once employed as a teacher and later served in the Guyana Defense Force. Caesar was described as abusive towards his reputed wife and had served three months imprisonment for assaulting her.
The prison authorities stated that behind bars, Caesar is helpful and would assist other inmates with their studies. Also, Caesar is currently enrolled in a barbering course and anger management counselling behind bars.
The businesswoman’s father, Kumar Persaud give a statement in court. He said, “I’m happy with the verdict, justice has been served. My daughter and grandsons can finally rest in peace.”
Justice Kissoon told the court: “This crime that was committed by Abishai Caesar is a despicable unparalleled act of cold-blooded ruthless savagery where an entire family…was meticulously and methodically brutally executed by Caesar, while these three persons were in the security of their home.”
The Judge considered that the crime was of extreme violence and the gravity of the injuries the victims received to venerable parts of the body and major organs. He also that said that the young mother was slaughtered and deprived of her children by Caesar, with the use of a deadly weapon during a home invasion.
In highlighting Caesar’s absence of remorse, the Judge told the convict, “You have treated life and death as meaningless. It is only right, it is only proper, and it is only just, in view of your horrific crimes having regards to the exceptional and specific circumstances that that you be sentenced to death”
Justice Kissoon told Ceaser that he will be taken to a lawful prison to suffer death in the manner authorised by law.
According to reports, Persaud’s house was broken into during a robbery and the woman and her two children were killed. At the time, Caesar was the woman’s neighbour. Government Pathologist, Dr. V. Brijmohan, on September 24, 2012, gave the cause of their deaths as hemorrhage and shock due to stab wounds.
In April 2016, investigators were able to arrest Caesar after his reputed wife went to the police and told them that he murdered Persaud and her sons during a home invasion.
In 2019, the case was first tried before Justice Brassington Reynolds, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict which resulted in a retrial.
FLASHBACK
Five years ago, the barber Abishai Caesar, was arrested by Police after his girlfriend complained of his abuse against her. It was then that she decided to reveal a chilling truth: the man she was living with had killed a woman and her two sons and had been on the run for four years – and she knew how he did it and why.
Once the woman was told of Caesar’s arrest, she returned to the station and told police they should also question Caesar for the 2012 murders of Anna Catherina liquor store owner Jennifer Persaud and her sons Afridi Bacchus, six, and Jadon Persaud, 18 months.
It was a truth that the woman had lived with for years; living a life of fear because Caesar had threatened to kill her and her family if she squealed on him.
The woman said that on the night of the murders, Caesar had told her he needed money and was heading out.
She said she had seen him go up the neighbour’s house – that of Mrs Persaud. She said she retired to bed, but then she heard screams coming from the house.Later, Caesar returned home and confessed to her that he had gone to the house to steal. She said Caesar told her he had managed to find only $3,000, but that Mrs Persaud had awoken and so he had to kill her because she had recognised him.
She said Caesar told her he had seen the young boys lying in the house and had figured they would get up because of the noise, and so he decided in a split second to slit their little throats also.
Caesar was never a suspect in the case, and the couple continued living next door to the murder scene for a while, until they moved into a house situated in the seawall section of Anna Catherina.
Later, they moved in with Caesar’s sister at Uitvlugt, West Coast Demerara, but they were put out of the house, the woman said.
They then moved into a house with an elderly lady a little down the street from Caesar’s sister, and in January 2016, Caesar said he had acquired some money and was going to squat on a piece of land on the government reserve, and they moved there with their daughter.
The woman is originally from Port Kaituma in the North West District, but did not grow up with her parents. She was sent to the Coast to live with her grandmother at the age of four, and when she was in her teens, she moved in with her father, her stepmother and their family.
It was there, at the age of 15, that she first set eyes on Caesar, then 26. He was working as a mason on a house not too far from her father’s house. Caesar would come to the house to buy egg-ball and other snacks the family was selling.
The two of them struck up a relationship, and at the age of 16, fearing that she wouldn’t do well at the CXC exams and would waste the money her family would spend on the examinations, she dropped out of school and started living with Caesar.
She said the abuse started early, but she thought that things would change as time went by. The two ended up having a daughter, and, the woman said, she had hoped that that would have caused Caesar to end his abusive ways, but that did not happen.
And then came a torrent of blows on the night of Friday April 25 and she decided she had to flee for her life and that of her daughter.
“I had to do it, or I would have died. I can’t go back on the years; now I have to look ahead.”When questioned by police, Caesar confessed to killing the Anna Catherina woman and her two children.
The woman’s father said Caesar had always suspected that his daughter was being abused, but every time he asked, she would deny there was a problem.
The last time — when she was punched to the face and he had seen the marks around her eyes — he asked her what had happened, but she did not fess up. He decided to confront Caesar, who claimed the woman was stung by bees.
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