Murder

Bequia has accommodated more than its fair share of eccentric visitors over the years, and has practiced admirable tolerance when exposed to displays of outlandish behaviour!  I have always been amazed by this tolerance, but when a tourist (or for that matter ANYONE) crosses a certain line, Bequians close ranks to deal with it.

When a yacht named Carefree dropped anchor in Admiralty Bay in August of 1996, the Island soon buzzed with talk about the boat’s American owners, James and Penny Fletcher. The couple were very heavy drinkers, and stories of their loud, ugly brawls in bars and restaurants made me grateful that they never patronized the Pizzeria. James in particular often drank to the point of passing out, and I believe is the only foreigner ever asked to leave a Rotary meeting on Bequia due to drunkenness!

Jerome (Jolly) Joseph was a water taxi operator, a friendly and reliable fellow from Hamilton who had served visiting yachts for several years. Jerome ran errands for the Fletchers, and whenever James passed out (which was evidently quite often), Penny would go ashore and cruise the island’s rum shops with him. She referred to Jerome as her “protector”, and it was rumoured that the couple were romantically involved.

One evening Nik didn’t come home from work at his usual time, and when the dinner hour arrived I began to worry. He and his partners often gathered for drinks at Buddy’s Bar in the late afternoon, but he was always home in time for dinner! Climbing into my car, I drove down to the harbor to find out what was happening.

I arrived at the Market Square to find a wide-eyed Buddy John standing behind his bar. Nik and his partners were sitting at a table outside, surrounded by broken glass. Penny Fletcher had been at the bar, so drunk and disorderly that she had actually bitten one of the men and broken his watch strap!  She had been ranting about her Smith & Wesson gun, claiming she had shot her rubber dinghy full of holes in order to celebrate her 35 birthday the day before. Penny also claimed to have been raped by a black man in Antigua, and that was she was going to “shoot herself a nigger” in revenge. The ground was covered with glass because she had sent the bar’s contents flying with a raging sweep of her arm. Carefree’s local deck-hand Rudy had arrived and removed her from the scene, later testifying that Penny had been “really out of control” that night. Rudy Hanson had recently been hired by the Fletchers, they had fired their Grenadian deck-hand at the end of August after a bitter altercation on board the yacht.

Two days later, Jerome’s wooden water taxi was found washed ashore at Hamilton, a position that was later determined to have been directly downwind of the yacht Carefree. The Fletchers had used his water taxi services to ferry them from the Gingerbread restaurant on the night of Oct. 6^th, and he was never seen again. Inside the boat were two live bullets, but Jerome was no-where to be found. Nik and his partners, with the episode at Buddy’s Bar fresh in their minds, notified the authorities about the gun Penny Fletcher had bragged about, and her drunken rant about shooting herself a nigger. The yacht Carefree attempted to head out to sea, but was intercepted by the Coast Guard. Although the Fletchers had registered a .22 Smith & Wesson pistol and 200 rounds of ammo when they had checked into the country, it was no-where to be found on the yacht; the couple told authorities that the gun and ammunition had been stolen by Benedict Redhead, the Grenadian deckhand they had recently fired, but Penny’s celebratory act of shooting holes in the rubber dinghy occurred well after Redhead had left Bequia. The live bullets found inside Jerome’s boat were .22 caliber and that fact, along with blood-stains found on one of the sailboat’s lockers and the missing gun, was deemed sufficient evidence to hold the Fletchers for further questioning.

Jerome’s body was found floating in the water off Moon-hole not long afterwards, partially eaten by creatures of the sea. He had been fatally shot in the chest with a .22 caliber bullet, which had pierced his lungs and heart and was duly listed as the official cause of death. The blood found on the locker inside Carefree was type O, the same as Jerome’s and, although James Fletcher claimed the blood was his, he refused to submit a blood sample when asked. The Fletchers were at that point jailed without bail to await trial.