By Roy Sanford, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
RELATIVES OF an elderly couple who were murdered in Braco, Trelawny, are still searching for the reason they were killed.
The apparent suicide of the prime suspect in the case has done nothing to alleviate their grief.
"He didn't feel anything, death was just too easy for him," Michele Brown, a daughter of the dead couple, told The Gleaner in referring to the suicide of Ronald Virgo, 48, who was found hanging in his cell in the Falmouth police lock-up.
The elderly couple were found dead days apart in the small community of Braco Land Settlement. Marlene Gidden, 56, was found on May 11 in bushes near her home with bloody nostrils. Clarence Brown, 70, also known as Jack, her common-law husband, was found on May 15 with extensive burns some 100 metres from their house.
Virgo was detained Friday night for questioning and was found hanging from a piece of cloth attached to a ventilation bar on Saturday morning by police who were doing routine checks. The police said he committed suicide.
Residents of the area say the couple were killed because of a long-standing dispute they had with Virgo who lived nearby. "From what I understand, Jack and the other man went to court about 10 years when his goat came on Jack's land and eat his crop," a resident, who requested anonymity, told The Gleaner. "From that time the man have a grudge against Jack."
RELATIVELY QUIET
Michele, the couple's daughter, said that since the incident with the goats, things were relatively quiet between her parents and Virgo. "The only problem my father use to complain about was that someone used to come and spray Gramaxone on his crops, killing them," she said. "Although nobody ever saw him (Virgo) they always used to suspect it was him."
Michele recalled the day she got a call from her brother, Leroy Brown, that her mother was dead. "I was at a christening in Mt. Salem" (Montego Bay), she said. "In the morning I knew they were missing but since it was Mother's Day I thought that my father had taken her for a walk. It was when Leroy called me that I learnt what happened and from that time on my life has been different."
Michele said that since the incident life for the family has been stressful. "I try not to think about it because I don't want to remember," she said. "It has been very stressful for the entire family."
She said that the faith of the family was the only thing that kept them going. "We have our anchor in Jesus," she said. "If this was not the case I don't know what we would do."
