As the Fletcher murder trial drew closer the media hype in the United States increased, and poor little Bequia was inundated with reporters eager to dig up whatever they were able to find. One Sunday, Nik and his partners were sitting at De Reef and heard one such reporter ask the bartender if he knew where the three men were. Without a glance in Nik’s direction the fellow smoothly told him they had gone to the harbour, knowing instinctively that the partners would not want to be questioned by a reporter. Bequia had been branded by the American press as being evil, corrupt and backward, and no-one on the Island was willing to add fuel to the fire by talking to a reporter.
The Fletcher’s gun had not been found, and that fact filled me with dismay. They had registered their Smith & Wesson when entering the country in August, and claimed it had been stolen by the Grenadian deckhand they had fired that same month. The deckhand (Benedict Redhead) had left Bequia on being dismissed from his job aboard Carefree and gone back to St. Lucia, where he had initially been hired by the Fletchers. However, Penny had shot holes in the yacht’s rubber dinghy on her 35th birthday, more than a month after Redhead had left Bequia. The bullet holes were proof that the Fletchers had been in possession of a gun on October 2nd, but where WAS it?
James Fletcher’s father was a wealthy man from Huntington, West Virginia. He had made his fortune selling mining equipment, and from what I gathered he was a decent man who stood by his son during the entire ordeal. He understood that James had a serious drinking problem as well as an unstable marriage, but he was a father and, like many fathers, did everything in his power to help his wayward son. By the time the case came to trial in July 1997 James had lost a great deal of weight, and was of course sober due to the lack of rum while in prison. His attorney was none other than Ralph Gonsalves, a local lawyer of note and at that time the leader of the country’s opposition party.
Penny Fletcher had been incarcerated in the women’s prison, and had evidently suffered from malnutrition. She didn’t have the same loving support as her husband but, because she was married to their son, the Fletcher family stood by her as well. Penny’s attorney was Richard Cheltenham from Barbados, a lawyer known throughout the Caribbean for his success record with murder trials.
The Prosecutor was Queen’s Counsel Karl Hudson-Phillips from Trinidad and Tobago. I was not surprised by this appointment, it was a smart move to hire a non-Vincentian to argue the state’s case; Hudson-Phillips was a respected lawyer above reproach, and his role as the prosecuting attorney indicated that the Fletchers would receive a fair and un-biased trial.
Eastern Caribbean High Court Judge Dunbar Cenac denied Hudson-Phillip’s requests to gag the press and to post-pone the trial, and the jury was duly selected within 30 minutes. To the surprise of spectators in the court-room the judge asked that the jurors be removed from the room so that he could address an important issue regarding the case with the lawyers. The issue was whether or not Penny Fletcher’s threat that she was going to “shoot herself a nigger” (a threat made in the presence of Nik and his partners at Buddy’s bar shortly before Jerome Joseph went missing) be admitted as testimony. The defense team claimed the statement was just “idle bar talk”, and that Penny had not named a specific black person in her rant. When the judge ruled that the inflammatory statement could not be used as evidence, I knew what the outcome of the trial would be and it was not going to be good.
Benedict Redhead testified that Jerome Joseph and Penny Fletcher had been romantically involved, and that she had accused him of raping her when he (Redhead) suggested she stop the affair. He claimed to have jumped overboard that night in fear of being shot by the Fletchers and had slept ashore, saying that Penny often waved her gun around in a threatening manner. He vehemently denied stealing the Smith & Wesson gun, but the fact remained that the gun had not been found. I thought the bullet-ridden dinghy was pretty damning evidence, it certainly proved that Penny had possessed a gun on October 2nd, but the bullet holes didn’t prove that the Fletchers had shot Jerome.
On August 8th, after having reflected on the case presented by all sides, Judge Cenac instructed the bailiff to release the Fletchers. He stated that there was no evidence before him, direct or indirect, that the accused committed the crime. Just as I had feared, without the “smoking gun” the fragments of evidence were deemed circumstantial, and did not hold up in a court of law.
The Fletchers were free to go after having spent almost nine months in Vincentian prisons. I understand that the couple gave just one interview after their release, to a reporter from the Huntington Herald-Dispatch. During the interview they incredibly blamed Son Mitchell for all their trouble, claiming they had embarrassed him by their intention to buy books for Bequia children. Seriously!? That notion is ridiculous, as well as James’s hint that Jerome’s real killer had been someone present in the courtroom other than himself or Penny. The heavily publicized Fletcher case perhaps proved to the world that tourists can receive a fair trial in St. Vincent, and that our justice system is not corrupt. Do I think justice was served? Quite frankly, NO. I firmly believe that either Penny or James (probably Penny) shot Jerome Joseph that night and got away with murder, and I always will.
This was my eye opener that perhaps America was not the fair world police bringing democracy to all and sunder. That perhaps other countries were getting the same media portrayal as Bequia did hence we’ve been fed a pack of lies by the American media for countless decades.