The Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) has been asked by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to as­sist them in ac­cess­ing vi­tal in­for­ma­tion for their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the deaths of Joel Bal­con and An­drew Mor­ris, the prime sus­pects in the mur­der of law clerk An­drea Bharatt.

The TTPS called in the FBI to ac­cess in­for­ma­tion stored in an Ap­ple iPhone that be­longed to one of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) of­fi­cers now un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Bal­con and Mor­ris were sus­pects in the mur­der of 23-year-old Bharatt who was kid­napped on Jan­u­ary 29 and her body found six days lat­er dumped off a precipice in the Heights of Aripo.

Mor­ris was held by SORT of­fi­cers on Jan­u­ary 31, and his fam­i­ly al­leged he was beat­en in their pres­ence be­fore be­ing tak­en away. He died the fol­low­ing day at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal. Bal­con, who was al­so held by SORT a few hours af­ter Mor­ris, died eight days lat­er on Feb­ru­ary 8 at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex af­ter be­ing ad­mit­ted with mas­sive head in­juries. Two au­top­sies con­duct­ed on Mor­ris re­vealed that he died from blunt force trau­ma, while the au­top­sy on Bal­con re­vealed that he died from mul­ti­ple force trau­ma.

Se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tors fa­mil­iar with the case had re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia in a pre­vi­ous sto­ry that Bal­con and Mor­ris were both kept in cus­tody for a to­tal of 13 hours, most of which were spent at SORT head­quar­ters and a SORT train­ing area known as the “kill house,” lo­cat­ed in Waller­field. The men were tak­en there with oth­er sus­pects who were lat­er re­leased.

The deaths of both Bal­con and Mor­ris trig­gered an in­ter­nal po­lice probe with a spe­cial task force head­ed by ASP Williams as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter, while the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) be­gan its own probe in mid-Feb­ru­ary as well. Guardian Me­dia was the first to re­port ex­clu­sive­ly about the task force which was hand-picked to probe the deaths of the two men.

With­in weeks of form­ing this elite task force to probe the men’s deaths, sev­er­al war­rants were ex­e­cut­ed and the cell­phones of at least 26 SORT of­fi­cers were seized in the month of April. Some of the cell­phones were lat­er re­turned while oth­ers were kept. Two cell­phones, how­ev­er, piqued the in­ter­est of in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

Joel Balcon, the main suspect in the murder of Andrea Bharatt.

Phones locked and re­port­ed stolen

The fac­to­ry set­tings on one of the cell­phones, an An­droid, had been wiped be­fore in­ves­ti­ga­tors could have ex­tract­ed the da­ta on it, Guardian Me­dia was told. The SORT of­fi­cer had re­port­ed that phone stolen to Bmo­bile. How­ev­er, sources re­vealed they were “some­what suc­cess­ful in re­triev­ing some of the da­ta from that phone.”

But re­triev­ing the da­ta from the Ap­ple iPhone proved more prob­lem­at­ic.

In­sid­ers fa­mil­iar with the case said af­ter a war­rant was is­sued to seize the iPhone and An­droid phone the SORT of­fi­cer re­port­ed both phones stolen with­in hours.

Sources said the of­fi­cer then no­ti­fied Ap­ple and the iPhone was im­me­di­ate­ly locked, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for in­ves­ti­ga­tors to gain ac­cess to the con­tents on the phone which al­so seemed to have been en­crypt­ed.

With­in hours of seiz­ing the iPhone, in­ves­ti­ga­tors reached out to the FBI in­di­cat­ing that the phone formed a key part of a ma­jor in­ves­ti­ga­tion and that they need­ed ac­cess to it.

The task force sent cor­re­spon­dence ask­ing for help since the phone con­tained key in­for­ma­tion that could as­sist them with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the last hours of Bal­con and Mor­ris.

The FBI with the as­sis­tance of its le­gal de­part­ment filed the re­quest with Ap­ple on be­half of the TTPS.

“Cor­re­spon­dence was then sent from Ap­ple to the FBI and then the FBI to the TTPS grant­i­ng them cer­tain ac­cess or pro­vid­ing da­ta for the said de­vice which in­clud­ed videos, voice notes, text mes­sages, What­sApp mes­sages etc. The TTPS then sent their of­fi­cial re­quest via soft copy to the FBI which was then re­layed to Ap­ple via the FBI le­gal chan­nel. Cer­tain iCloud da­ta and oth­er ma­te­r­i­al were sent back to the TTPS through the FBI,” a source fa­mil­iar with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­di­cat­ed.

In­struc­tions were then is­sued by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, sources said, to re­trieve hard copy in­for­ma­tion from Ap­ple to show what was sent to the TTPS. “This is use­ful for court pur­pos­es and ev­i­den­tial val­ue and chain of cus­tody,” ex­plained an in­side source.

Chain of cus­tody is es­pe­cial­ly cru­cial in crim­i­nal cas­es and is es­sen­tial­ly de­fined as: “A process that tracks the move­ment of ev­i­dence through its col­lec­tion, safe­guard­ing and analy­sis life cy­cle by doc­u­ment­ing each per­son who han­dled the ev­i­dence, the date/time it was col­lect­ed or trans­ferred, and the pur­pose of the trans­fer.”

Andrew Morris

Why is this da­ta crit­i­cal?

The da­ta re­trieved from this par­tic­u­lar iPhone, sources con­firmed, im­pli­cat­ed sev­er­al se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers who knew what took place with the sus­pects while in the “care and cus­tody of SORT of­fi­cers.”

Sources fa­mil­iar with the case in­di­cat­ed that the sus­pects were tak­en to the “kill house,” an area where SORT of­fi­cers trained and they were in­ter­ro­gat­ed and al­leged­ly beat­en. What in­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so un­cov­ered was that a SORT of­fi­cer at the lo­ca­tion where the sus­pects were be­ing held fa­cil­i­tat­ed a three-way phone call be­tween one of the sus­pect’s fa­ther, an­oth­er se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer and him­self. The sus­pect was then al­lowed to speak to his fa­ther on the phone where he im­me­di­ate­ly made al­le­ga­tions of be­ing beat­en.

“The oth­er se­nior of­fi­cer on the line dur­ing that con­ver­sa­tion nev­er took any pos­i­tive steps to ad­dress the al­le­ga­tion be­ing made by the sus­pect,” a source re­vealed.

Sources re­vealed that in­for­ma­tion gath­ered from the iPhone showed video footage cap­tured of the al­leged beat­ings and there was da­ta show­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with oth­er se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers.

As the task force con­tin­ues its in­ves­ti­ga­tion they have al­so dis­cov­ered that in­for­ma­tion in sev­er­al di­aries had been rewrit­ten and er­ro­neous in­for­ma­tion placed in par­tic­u­lar re­ports record­ed.

Sources said that the of­fences of joint en­ter­prise mur­der are pos­si­bly be­ing looked at as well as charges of as­sault and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

DE­TAILS OF AU­TOP­SIES

Bal­con and Mor­ris were al­leged­ly beat­en to death ac­cord­ing to their au­top­sies.

Two post mortems were done on Mor­ris’ body—one by the State and the oth­er pri­vate­ly by rel­a­tives—re­vealed he died from blunt force trau­ma.

The first au­top­sy done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre re­vealed that Mor­ris suf­fered brain frac­tures, sev­er­al bro­ken ribs, bleed­ing from in­ter­nal or­gans, burnt marks to the back (al­leged­ly from a taser), con­tu­sion to the right eye, bleed­ing to the brain as well as dam­age to his shoul­ders and legs.

Bal­con, who po­lice la­belled as the mas­ter­mind in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Bharatt, was known to the po­lice as a sex­u­al, drug, firearms, rob­bery and lar­ce­ny of­fend­er. He was in an un­con­scious state un­til he died eight days af­ter he was de­tained by po­lice.

Bal­con had been picked up mere hours af­ter Mor­ris and was lat­er hos­pi­talised at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex af­ter suf­fer­ing mas­sive head in­juries. He was al­so paral­ysed.

A post mortem on Bal­con’s body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James by pathol­o­gist Dr East­lyn Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris re­vealed that he died due to mul­ti­ple trau­ma to the body.

The in­juries he sus­tained could have been due to a beat­ing he al­leged­ly sus­tained while try­ing to es­cape po­lice cus­tody.

SORT HEAD CHARGED

The on­ly SORT of­fi­cer to be charged to date is the for­mer head of the unit Mark Her­nan­dez.

Her­nan­dez was charged by of­fi­cers of the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau(PSB) for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. Her­nan­dez was charged in re­la­tion to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the treat­ment of the sus­pects held for the ab­duc­tion and mur­der of Bharatt.

He was grant­ed bail in the sum of $300,000 by a Jus­tice of the Peace on April 20 and his mat­ter was lat­er ad­journed to be heard in the San­gre Grande Mag­is­trate’s Court on June 1. The mat­ter was again ad­journed and re­mains be­fore the courts. Her­nan­dez up­on his re­lease from the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion de­nied any wrong­do­ing in re­la­tion to the sur­viv­ing sus­pect and the two oth­ers that died.

ONE CHARGED FOR BHARATT’S MUR­DER

Two weeks af­ter Bharatt was killed 24-year-old Ne­gus George was charged with her mur­der. George an­swered the charge vir­tu­al­ly be­fore an Ari­ma Mag­is­trate on Feb­ru­ary 11, 2021.

His girl­friend, Giselle Hob­son, was charged by po­lice with re­ceiv­ing stolen prop­er­ty. Both ap­peared on the same day and the mat­ter was lat­er ad­journed to March 10. The mat­ter was called again and it was ad­journed.