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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Suspect in Andrea’s murder linked to sex crimes

by

Mark Bassant
1616 days ago
20210206

The dis­cov­ery of hu­man re­mains at Heights of Aripo just hours af­ter the de­com­posed body of 23-year-old An­drea Bharatt was found has prompt­ed homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors to widen their in­ves­ti­ga­tion to in­clude a se­ries of sex crimes in which women were raped and mur­dered but their bod­ies nev­er found.

Bharatt was kid­napped on Jan­u­ary 29, af­ter board­ing a car at King Street, Ari­ma, on her way home from work. For six days po­lice searched forest­ed ar­eas in east Trinidad, and her body was even­tu­al­ly found off a precipice in Heights of Aripo on Thurs­day af­ter­noon.

“We are cer­tain that this man, who is the main sus­pect in An­drea’s mur­der, used this area as his dump­ing ground in the past. This man knows the area well and is well con­nect­ed,” a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer told Guardian me­dia.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve the sus­pect might be re­spon­si­ble for the dis­ap­pear­ance of sev­er­al women over the years.

“There was a woman that went miss­ing last year. We be­lieve he kid­napped and raped her with the same modus operan­di as An­drea’s. He and oth­er men were brought in for ques­tion­ing around Ju­ly and their homes searched but there was no ma­te­r­i­al ev­i­dence found for us to tie any of them to the case,” a se­nior homi­cide source re­vealed.

The source added that the sus­pect might have been re­spon­si­ble for the dis­ap­pear­ance of Teri “Smur­fette” Gomez, who had a child with him and was of­ten beat­en be­fore she went miss­ing in Jan­u­ary 2008.

On Thurs­day, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, told re­porters the woman’s sis­ter, Tony Vin­cent, had reached out to him on so­cial me­dia post. Her sis­ter went miss­ing 13 years ago and po­lice have not been able to crack the case.

Grif­fith said: “Speak­ing to wit­ness­es and per­sons, what they told us is that this in­di­vid­ual was ac­cus­tomed to as­sault­ing and rap­ing women, he takes them and throws them in the for­est in that area and that is what we have to deal with in so­ci­ety.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­turned to the Heights of Aripo yes­ter­day morn­ing af­ter re­ceiv­ing a tele­phone call around 9.40 am about hu­man re­mains.

Short­ly af­ter 10 am, homi­cide crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors went to the area ap­prox­i­mate­ly two min­utes’ dri­ve from where Bharatt’s body was dis­cov­ered in a bushy area off a precipice. Down a 20 to 30-foot precipice off the side of a sharp cor­ner in the road, they re­cov­ered a black bag with what ap­peared to be hu­man and an­i­mal re­mains. The re­mains have been tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre in St James for test­ing.

Res­i­dents in the area have com­plained for years that the area is a dump­ing ground.

A 37-year-old sus­pect is in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal and may be paral­ysed af­ter he at­tempt­ed to es­cape from po­lice cus­tody hours af­ter he was de­tained for ques­tion­ing last Sun­day. He has a rap sheet stretch­ing from 2004 to 2020, in­clud­ing sex­u­al of­fences, firearms, rob­bery and kid­nap­ping. ac­cord­ing to de­tailed in­for­ma­tion seen by Guardian Me­dia ac­com­pa­nied by a pho­to­graph of the in­di­vid­ual al­so known by the false name of De­von Charles.

The main, who is at an undis­closed med­ical in­sti­tu­tion, has at least four dif­fer­ent known ad­dress­es—two in San­gre Grande, one in Va­len­cia, and an­oth­er in To­ba­go.

In 2017 he was com­mit­ted to stand tri­al for rape and kid­nap­ping in To­ba­go and re­mained in jail for three years un­til he se­cured bail in Oc­to­ber 2020.

Re­ports are that he at­tempt­ed to lead the po­lice away from the crime scene to Ja­cob Set­tle­ment in San­gre Grande last Sun­day. A con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia states that he first went to Windy Hill, Arou­ca, af­ter kid­nap­ping Bharatt.

Po­lice are work­ing on the the­o­ry that Bharatt may have been killed at this lo­ca­tion where the sus­pect spent just over an hour. Cer­tain ar­eas of Windy Hill are well known to the po­lice and there are sev­er­al dirt roads lead­ing in­to the moun­tains that are ac­ces­si­ble by car, mak­ing them easy lo­ca­tions to com­mit crimes out of earshot of Windy Hill res­i­dents.

Sources be­lieve the sus­pect then drove to an area in Pin­to Road, Ari­ma, where he sold Bharatt’s phone for $700 to a woman, who has since been de­tained by po­lice.

An eye­wit­ness told po­lice when the Nis­san Ver­sa en­tered the area some­one was ly­ing on the back­seat of the ve­hi­cle.

The sus­pect, who po­lice be­lieve on his way to Va­len­cia at that time, made a de­tour and dumped Bharatt’s body at Heights of Aripo be­fore con­tin­u­ing his jour­ney.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say based on in­tel­li­gence by the time the sus­pect ar­rived in San­gre Grande he had no one else in the car. On Fri­day evening he had spo­ken to sev­er­al per­sons on his cell­phone and lat­er switched the false num­ber plates back to the orig­i­nal plates in the rent­ed car, so as not to arouse the sus­pi­cion.

He re­turned the rent­ed ve­hi­cle the next day in San­gre Grande and lat­er went to San Fer­nan­do to pur­chase a ve­hi­cle from a man for $20,000. Au­thor­i­ties de­ter­mined there was no at­tempt on the sus­pect’s part to make any trade for Bharatt to im­ply that hu­man traf­fick­ing may have been in­volved.

The man who sold the car to the main sus­pect was de­tained and lat­er re­leased af­ter checks con­firmed that he had at­tempt­ed to con­duct a le­git­i­mate busi­ness trans­ac­tion with the sus­pect, who he did not know.

Bharatt’s body was tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day. It will be swabbed as COVID-pro­to­cols must be fol­lowed be­fore an au­top­sy which is ex­pect­ed to ve done on Mon­day.

Yes­ter­day Bharatt’s fa­ther and oth­er rel­a­tives were whisked in through the back gate of the com­pound and lat­er left the same way with­out speak­ing to the me­dia.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day about the pos­si­ble court link in Bharatt’s death Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith said: “I have no such in­for­ma­tion.”

Two oth­er se­nior homi­cide sources dis­missed the al­le­ga­tion as false.


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