The deacons ‘skin’ her face

ON THE morning of May 11, 1977, Elsaida Beckford found her 19-year-old daughter Gretel Barrett’s dead body with a mutilated face in her yard at Sign Irwin, St James. The year before there was a similar discovery, of two women, but nobody was charged.

The gruesome discovery and the sensation that it inspired rocked the community and beyond, driving more fear and terror into the hearts of residents. The Daily Gleaner of Saturday, August 20, 1977 reported on the incident. Two Irwin, St James residents – Delbert Holt and Wilbert Jackson – 20-year-old deacons at a Pentecostal Church at Gravel Lane in Montego Bay, were eventually charged for Barrett’s murder.

At the first session of the preliminary inquiry in a packed courtroom at the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate’s Court, Judge David Pitter presided. Holt was represented by Frank Phipps and Jackson by Carl Miller. Canute Brown represented the Crown.

Rat bat

Things got bizarre when the pathologist, Dr Rosemarie Ashby, who did the post-mortem on May 20 at Cornwall Regional Hospital, fell ill while she was being cross-examined by Phipps. The proceeding came to a halt. After she made her recovery, the matter continued. Also, the key witness, 19-year-old Audley Bowen, was absent from court. When he turned up for the second session, he told Phipps, under cross-examination, that he fell ill after a “rat bat” landed on his head. He became afflicted with “funny sensations” and pain all over his body. At one point he said he saw Jesus leaving the cross to go heal him.

In the subsequent murder trial, Beckford testified that on May 10, her daughter, the mother of two children herself, went to the post office early in the morning and returned. She left home again, but did not return up to the time she had retired to bed about 10 p.m. However, she recalled hearing footsteps and the sounds of people struggling in her yard. She stood on her bed and looked through a window, but saw nothing to alarm her.

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On her way to the toilet the following morning, she found Barrett’s body in the same area from which she had heard the sounds the night before. Yet, the court was told, her clothes were not soaked with blood, nor was the spot where she was found saturated. No murder weapon was found. Apparently, she was murdered elsewhere, but that too was never found.

Medical evidence

The medical evidence that was read at the trial, showed that Barrett’s ear, skin and subcutaneous tissue were removed from the right side of her head, the right forehead, the right cheek and right upper and lower jaw. The right temporalis muscle, the right sternomastoid muscle, part of the right trapezius muscle, tissue around the right eye, the great vessel at the right side of the neck, along with skin, superficial muscles and sternomastoid muscles were all removed. A muscle was pared from the bone and skull. The cause of death was stated to be haemorrhage from the removal of tissue from the right side of the neck.

The case, tried before Justice White and a jury in the Westmoreland Circuit Court, concluded on February 10, 1978, with a conviction based on the evidence of Audley Bowen, then a member of the Riverside Open Bible Church at Sign Irwin. He did not see the actual murder, but what he saw was enough to convince the jury.

According to Bowen, on May 10, 1977, he had attended a member’s meeting at his church. On his way back home, about 11:15 p.m., he passed Gretel Barrett in the company of both men. She asked him if he was afraid why he was walking so fast. He told her no. Delbert Holt then remarked that ‘they’ had killed Miss Williams [the year before] and had thrown her daughter into bushes.

When Bowen arrived at his grandmother’s home, he stood at the door waiting for someone to open it. Then, at six chains away he saw, under the glare of streetlights, both men and Barrett at a crossroads, from which they went to an open lot.

Heard a scream

Being suspicious of the movements, Bowen took a short cut to the crossroads. He saw no one, but he heard a scream that lasted about 10 seconds. He then moved to the side of his aunt’s house where he stood for a short while. From there he saw both men carrying the body of a woman. It was about 20 minutes since he had heard the scream. The men placed the body through a barbed-wire fence surrounding the premises of Elsaida Beckford. He then lost sight of them.

From the back of the house to which he had moved, he again saw the men without Barrett’s body. He was one and a half chains away. When Wilbert Jackson saw Bowen it was reported that Jackson said, “Don’t let me hear me name call tomorrow, or else me come fi yuh.”

Bowen said he became fearful and thus fled to his mother’s house, 11 chains away. The following morning, he left for Kingston, from where he moved on to Thompson Town in Clarendon. While at this last address, he received some information which led him to Detective Ladreth Martin of the Montego Bay CID. It was revealed at the trial that Bowen was acquainted with Holt, and Jackson, who was a former member of the Riverside Open Bible Church.

Holt and Jackson appealed the conviction on the ground that Bowen was insane. And despite presenting witnesses to say they were elsewhere when the murder took place, and the lawyers claiming that Bowen was insane, on the 17th of October 1980, the appeals were dismissed. And they were charged again and convicted for murder and an attempted murder, arising from an incident that took place in 1976 in the same area.

Skinner Man Church

The motivation behind these murders by two young deacons was never proven, but, because of the macabre nature of the deaths, the folklore is steep in witchcraft. According to a source, body parts and blood were found in bottles in the home of the accused. The names of three women, including Gretel, who were to be killed, were found in a book by the police. Then there was the fainting spell of the pathologist, and the claim by the main witness for the prosecution that a “ratbat” attacked him.

A female lawyer ,who was a child living in the area at the time, and who reminded this writer about the incident, said she was scared, as the deacons were called “skinners”, from the way in which they mutilated their victims. She said she knew Delbert Jackson, who was a well-spoken chap. This writer also remembers the Pentecostal church in Gravel Lane being referred to as the ‘Skinner Man Church’.

Delbert Jackson and Wilbert Holt were among the last men to be hanged in Jamaica, in the mid-1980s.