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Sunday, July 6, 2025

On­ly one Vin­dra ac­cused walks free im­me­di­ate­ly

Error keeps 7 in jail overnight

by

20160531

Eight of the men ac­cused of mur­der­ing busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man al­most a decade ago, were yes­ter­day ac­quit­ted at the end of the longest and most ex­pen­sive tri­al in this coun­try's his­to­ry.

It took a 12-mem­ber ju­ry sit­ting in the Port-of-Spain Sec­ond Crim­i­nal Court four hours to re­view the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in the tri­al over the past two years, be­fore re­turn­ing not guilty ver­dicts for twin broth­ers Sher­von and De­von Pe­ters, and their old­er broth­er Dwayne Gloster, sib­lings Kei­da and Jamille Gar­cia, Mar­lon Trim­ming­ham, Ronald Arm­strong and An­to­nio Charles.

Two of their co-ac­cused Trim­ming­ham's broth­er Earl and Lyn­don Charles–were not as lucky, though, as the ju­ry could not de­cide on a unan­i­mous ver­dict for both men, forc­ing pre­sid­ing Judge Mal­colm Holdip to or­der them to be re­tried.

As the ju­ry fore­man in­formed Holdip of their de­ci­sions yes­ter­day, muf­fled screams and cries of re­lief were heard from the ac­cused men's fam­i­ly and friends who packed the pub­lic gallery to ca­pac­i­ty.

While some of the ac­cused men wept open­ly and mut­tered silent prayers, Earl Trim­ming­ham and Charles had de­ject­ed looks on their faces. In a show­ing of sol­i­dar­i­ty, each of the freed men pat­ted their for­mer co-ac­cused on their shoul­ders as they were be­ing led out of the court.

Yes­ter­day's le­gal vic­to­ry was mixed, how­ev­er, as on­ly one of the eight–De­von Pe­ters–was im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased and al­lowed to greet ju­bi­lant rel­a­tives out­side the Hall of Jus­tice on Knox Street.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the oth­er men were not im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased due to an ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror in their crim­i­nal trac­ing, which in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed they were still await­ing tri­al for Naipaul-Cool­man's kid­nap­ping. The re­main­ing men are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased from the Port-of-Spain State Prison once the er­ror is cor­rect­ed this morn­ing.

The mix-up caused pan­ic among their rel­a­tives, who were con­fused by the sight of Pe­ters alone emerg­ing from the court.

"How come he get out and not the oth­ers? What go­ing to hap­pen to them now?" one woman said anx­ious­ly be­fore her rel­a­tive's de­fence at­tor­neys ex­plained the is­sue.

In a brief in­ter­view af­ter em­brac­ing his fa­ther for the first time in al­most ten years, Pe­ters said he was hap­py and re­lieved that "jus­tice was served" in the case.

"I just want to put this whole thing be­hind me and start think­ing about how to start over my life," Pe­ters whis­per­ered to me­dia per­son­nel.

Pe­ters' fa­ther, An­tho­ny Gloster, whose oth­er sons, Sher­von (De­von's twin broth­er) and Dwayne Gloster, were al­so ac­quit­ted by the ju­ry, was left al­most speech­less by the ver­dict.

"I al­ways knew they were in­no­cent. I just want to hug my boys tight right now," a teary-eyed Gloster said.

Naipaul-Cool­man was ab­duct­ed from her home at Radix Road, Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas, on De­cem­ber 19, 2006. A $122,000 ran­som was paid by her fam­i­ly but she was not re­leased and her body has nev­er been found.

The high pro­file tri­al had been post­poned sev­er­al times in the past as the ac­cused men were un­able to re­tain at­tor­neys to de­fend them.

Ju­ry se­lec­tion be­gan al­most three years ago af­ter the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty in­sti­tut­ed a spe­cial arrange­ment where $45,000 a month was al­lo­cat­ed to re­tain both an ad­vo­cate and in­struct­ing at­tor­ney for each ac­cused.

The tri­al ini­tial­ly be­gan with 12 ac­cused men but was re­duced af­ter Al­lan "Scan­ny" Mar­tin was shot dead af­ter stag­ing a dar­ing prison break in Port-of-Spain in Ju­ly last year. Joel Fras­er was on tri­al un­til Jan­u­ary this year, when Holdip up­held a no case sub­mis­sion from his at­tor­neys, who claimed the State had pre­sent­ed in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence link­ing him to the crime.

Hos­tile wit­ness hurt case

Since start­ing pre­sent­ing ev­i­dence in the tri­al in March 2014, pros­e­cu­tors had claimed Naipaul-Cool­man was held cap­tive in a red brick house at Up­per La Puer­ta, Diego Mar­tin, shared by Sher­von and De­von Pe­ters and their broth­er Dwayne Gloster, be­fore she was killed, dis­mem­bered and her body dis­posed of.

They re­lied on the ev­i­dence of their main wit­ness Keon Gloster, who was al­leged­ly present at the time of her mur­der but did not par­tic­i­pate.

How­ev­er, Gloster was de­clared a hos­tile wit­ness af­ter he re­peat­ed­ly claimed to be co­erced by po­lice in­to im­pli­cat­ing the ac­cused men, most of whom he is re­lat­ed to.

In his sworn state­ments, which were ten­dered in­to ev­i­dence, Gloster had al­leged­ly told po­lice that three days af­ter Christ­mas he went to the house where he saw all the ac­cused men sur­round­ing the for­mer Xtra Foods chief ex­ec­u­tive, who was sit­ting on a pool ta­ble.

Gloster claimed that James was in­ter­ro­gat­ing her about her fam­i­ly's fail­ure to pay a larg­er ran­som, when he drew a gun and shot her in the chest be­fore invit­ing his co-ac­cused to as­sist him in dis­mem­ber­ing her with a ro­tary saw and bury­ing her body parts in a forest­ed area of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Be­sides his claims of co­er­cion, de­fence at­tor­neys al­so al­leged that Gloster, who has epilep­sy, was on a cock­tail of med­ica­tion which would have made him "sug­gestible."

The pool ta­ble was al­so a ma­jor source of con­tention, as it was not pro­duced in court and sev­er­al crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors, who in­spect­ed it weeks af­ter her mur­der, said they did not no­tice any­thing sus­pi­cious about it.

While all the ac­cused men de­nied any wrong­do­ing in their in­ter­views with po­lice months af­ter Naipaul-Cool­man's dis­ap­pear­ance, Earl Trim­ming­ham ad­mit­ted to see­ing her when she was tak­en to the com­mu­ni­ty but de­nied par­tic­i­pat­ing in her mur­der.

In ad­di­tion to Gloster's ev­i­dence, pro­s­ec­tors al­so re­lied on a roll of duct tape and a pair of la­tex gloves which were al­leged­ly re­cov­ered by po­lice in and around the red brick house.

The items were sent to a lab­o­ra­to­ry in Eng­land for test­ing and Naipaul-Cool­man's DNA was found on both. De­fence at­tor­neys ar­gued that both items could have been plant­ed by po­lice and nei­ther had any fin­ger­prints on DNA sam­ples which were linked to the ac­cused men.

Al­though pros­e­cu­tors ad­mit­ted they had no ev­i­dence link­ing the men to the busi­ness­woman's ab­duc­tion, they pre­sent­ed a gun al­leged­ly found in Kei­da Gar­cia's house, which was linked to spent shells re­cov­ered on the scene of the kid­nap­ping.

Gar­cia's moth­er, Ri­ta, the on­ly wit­ness called by the ac­cused men, claimed the gun was found by po­lice while she and her son were be­ing ques­tioned by their col­leagues out­side.

She ac­knowl­edged that she signed the search war­rant which stat­ed the gun had been found in the search but claimed to have not read it thor­ough­ly. Pros­e­cu­tors were al­so forced to ad­mit that one of the of­fi­cers who al­leged­ly found the gun had been ac­cused of fab­ri­cat­ing ev­i­dence in an un­re­lat­ed drug traf­fick­ing case in the past.


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