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Monday, July 21, 2025

Convicted killer jailed again for death of woman

by

423 days ago
20240524

A 62-year-old man who ad­mit­ted to killing his com­mon-law wife in a do­mes­tic dis­pute sev­er­al years af­ter he com­plet­ed a prison sen­tence for killing his preg­nant ex-girl­friend in a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent, has been sen­tenced to just over 17 years in prison. 

Win­ston Joseph was await­ing tri­al for mur­der be­fore his lawyer Michelle Ali, from the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment, ne­go­ti­at­ed a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) in mid-March. 

At a hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing, High Court Judge De­van Ram­per­sad ap­proved the agree­ment which rec­om­mend­ed a 24-year sen­tence on the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter. How­ev­er, he ap­plied a two-year in­crease in the sen­tence based on Joseph’s pre­vi­ous manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion for killing his ex-girl­friend.

Joseph is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in al­most six months as Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ap­plied a one-third dis­count for his guilty plea and de­duct­ed the time he spent in prison await­ing tri­al. 

In May 1994, Joseph was con­vict­ed of manslaugh­ter by a 12-mem­ber ju­ry and was sen­tenced to five years in prison. He was ac­cused of mur­der­ing 35-year-old Pan­sy Wilt­shire at their apart­ment in Mal­oney Gar­dens, Arou­ca, on March 16, 1991. 

On the night of her mur­der, the cou­ple’s next-door neigh­bour re­port­ed hear­ing Wilt­shire flog­ging her son and ac­cus­ing him of ly­ing.  When the neigh­bour went to the cou­ple’s apart­ment the fol­low­ing morn­ing, her son claimed that his moth­er was still sleep­ing. 

Short­ly af­ter, Wilt­shire’s sis­ter con­tact­ed the po­lice and asked them to check up on her sis­ter. Wilt­shire was found dead on her bed cov­ered with a sheet up to her neck. A post-mortem re­vealed that she had been stran­gled. 

When Joseph was held by the po­lice, he con­fessed to killing Wilt­shire.  He said when he ar­rived home, Wilt­shire was not at home and her son told him that she had spent the day with her for­mer ro­man­tic part­ner. 

He claimed that when she re­turned home from a neigh­bour’s house, he con­front­ed her over the al­le­ga­tion.  He al­leged that Wilt­shire flogged her son and sent him to his room while she con­tin­ued her ar­gu­ment with Joseph. 

Joseph said dur­ing the ar­gu­ment, she pulled a knife on him and he choked her in self-de­fence. He ad­mit­ted that he placed her body on the bed and cov­ered it be­fore run­ning away.

In the re­cent case, Joseph was ac­cused of killing Ann-Marie Mark on Oc­to­ber 4, 2003.  Joseph met Mark af­ter com­plet­ing his prison sen­tence and the cou­ple lived to­geth­er at Mark’s home on Fac­to­ry Road, Diego Mar­tin. 

Mark’s son and daugh­ter re­port­ed hear­ing their moth­er ar­gu­ing with Joseph. The son in­ter­vened but his moth­er told him to con­tin­ue get­ting ready for work. 

They heard their moth­er scream and saw Joseph run­ning away from their house.  They found their moth­er with a stab wound to her chest. She was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal but died while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment. 

Joseph evad­ed cap­ture but was even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed at a con­struc­tion site in Wood­brook in Ju­ly 2007 af­ter Mark’s daugh­ter saw him work­ing there.  He ini­tial­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing. 

“I doh know noth­ing about that, al­lyuh try­ing to frame me or what?” he re­port­ed­ly told the po­lice. 

In her mit­i­ga­tion plea, Ali said Joseph ad­mit­ted that he had anger man­age­ment is­sues but claimed he learned to con­trol it dur­ing his lengthy stay in prison. 

“He in­structs that the con­di­tions in prison have taught him self-con­trol af­ter hav­ing to co­hab­it with many in­mates from dif­fer­ent back­grounds,” she said.

“He in­di­cates that anger man­age­ment will no longer af­fect his life and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his as­ser­tion can be found in the fact that he has no in­frac­tions to the prison rules dur­ing his lengthy pe­ri­od of in­car­cer­a­tion,” she added, as she not­ed that he par­tic­i­pat­ed in yo­ga class­es and re­li­gious pro­grammes while in prison. 

Ali added that he was re­morse­ful and want­ed to apol­o­gise to Mark’s rel­a­tives for his ac­tions.  

Joseph was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Shuzvon Ram­dass, while Veon­na Neale-Munroe and Lin­di­anne Mar­shall ap­peared for the state.


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