A St Ann businessman and gas distributor accused of ordering the murder of his wife and another man accused of carrying out the killing were convicted in the Home Circuit Court on Tuesday afternoon, March 15 in what is being dubbed as a “marathon trial.”
Bertram Clarke, 64, and his co-accused, Arthur Robinson are the men who were found guilty of murder by a 12-member jury after retiring for three hours to deliberate.
Members of the jury have been exempted from serving as jurors for the next 10 years by the presiding judge.
On the night of October 26, 2007, 74-year-old Floris Clarke was found at the couple’s home in Watt Town, St Ann with her head bashed in and her throat slashed.
$60,000 FOR MURDER
In a case that the North Coast Times initially reported on when the matter appeared first appeared before the courts, Bertram Clarke, who was 56 at the time of the incident, was eighteen years his wife’s junior.
Two juveniles at the time, one 14 years old and the other 15 from the same high school in St Ann, along with Clarke were taken into custody for the murder.
Police had described it as a case in which Mr Clarke ordered the murder of his wife and arranged to pay the schoolboys $60, 000 to carry out the act. They said that Mr Clarke had become angry with his wife who had recently returned from England to live with him.
On Friday evening, October 26, 2007, the act was allegedly carried out by the two teenage boys. On the instruction of Mr Clarke, they broke into the Clarkes’ house in the small district of Chewmagna, Watt Town where they stabbed and slashed Mrs Clarke with a knife. Mr Clarke was not at home at the time of the act.
CHURCH MEETING
Mrs Clarke was left for dead at the house. However, when Mr Clarke called police and said he had come home to find his wife dead, police found she had not yet died and took her first to St Ann’s Bay Hospital from where she was transferred to Kingston Public Hospital.
By the following day (Saturday, October 27, 2007), police took Mr Clarke into custody. Mrs Clarke died Sunday and within days a link was established to the teens.
Police arrested them and said at the time that they gave statements confessing to murdering Mrs Clarke. They took the police to the murder weapon, a knife they had thrown into a pit latrine at the Watt Town School. They told the police that Mr Clarke had promised them $60,000 to murder his wife.
They should have received the money on the Sunday after, when they met Mr Clarke at church. But the police had already arrested him so the church meeting and pay off did not take place.
A MARATHON
The trial commenced on November 9, 2015 before Justice Gloria Smith in courtroom number one in the Home Circuit in Kingston and caused all other criminal cases that were previously set for trial in that courtroom over the period to be adjourned.
The case had several adjournments in December and ended finally last week Tuesday after 15-weeks.
Initially, the case was before the St. Ann Circuit Court for some seven years, but last year was transferred to the Home Circuit list.
It was also held up reportedly because Donald Bryan, the Legal Aid-assigned attorney for Robinson went overseas in the middle of the trial and was not available for several days.
17 WITNESSES CALLED
The crown, represented by senior deputy director of public prosecutions Lisa Palmer Hamilton reportedly led evidence from 17 witnesses that Clarke’s husband, Bertram Clarke conspired with two schoolboys to kill his wife.
One of these boys, Arthur Robinson, who was also from the community of Watt Town, was Bertram Clarke’s co-accused in the case. The second schoolboy, Emmanuel Newland, had previously pleaded guilty in July 2011 to the murder and is currently serving a prison sentence of 15 years.
Bertram Clarke and Arthur Robinson are scheduled to be sentenced on April 21, 2016 and the trial judge in the matter has requested a social enquiry report for both men.
