Derek Achong

Cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion from an in­for­mant was the spark which made po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing the kid­nap­ping of cen­tral busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man di­vert their at­ten­tion to the 12 men on tri­al for her mur­der.This was re­vealed in the tes­ti­mo­ny of the State's lat­est wit­ness in the high-pro­file mur­der tri­al, Supt Rad­cliffe Box­hill, who be­gan his ev­i­dence be­fore pre­sid­ing Judge Mal­colm Holdip in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day.

Box­hill, a homi­cide de­tec­tive who was at­tached to the Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence Unit (CIU) when the Xtra Foods chief ex­ec­u­tive was ab­duct­ed in front of her Ch­agua­nas home on De­cem­ber 19, 2006, said yes­ter­day that days af­ter the kid­nap­ping he met the in­for­mant out­side the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain.He said af­ter re­ceiv­ing the in­for­ma­tion he and a large con­tin­gent of po­lice and sol­diers raid­ed the homes of some of the ac­cused men at Up­per La Puer­ta Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin.

He said when he first ar­rived, he told one of the ac­cused, Sher­von Pe­ters, he had in­for­ma­tion that Pe­ters was able to as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Naipaul-Cool­man's ab­duc­tion.

Box­hill said af­ter Pe­ters de­nied any knowl­edge of the kid­nap­ping, he asked Pe­ters to lead him to the home of an­oth­er one of the ac­cused men, Earl Trim­ming­ham, who lived a short dis­tance away. He said while Trim­ming­ham de­nied any wrong­do­ing, he point­ed out an area known as the spring which he said was be­ing used as a camp by Pe­ters and some of the oth­er ac­cused.

Box­hill re­vealed when they went there, they found a struc­ture un­der a silk cot­ton tree made out of wood and met­al, in which crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors found cig­a­rette butts, a la­tex glove and a black ski mask.His tes­ti­mo­ny and yes­ter­day's hear­ing were cut short at this point as an at­tor­ney ob­ject­ed on a le­gal is­sue which the judge had to deal with im­me­di­ate­ly.

Box­hill was one of three wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied yes­ter­day, as the court al­so heard the brief ev­i­dence of homi­cide de­tec­tive WPC Ger­ma­line Mitchell-Go­sine, who made notes of the ev­i­dence re­cov­ered in Pe­ters' house, where pros­e­cu­tors claim Naipaul-Cool­man was kept cap­tive be­fore be­ing killed.The tri­al is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue this morn­ing with Box­hill's cross-ex­am­i­na­tion.