Adrian Frater
, News EditorWESTERN BUREAU:
A PALL of gloom is now hanging over the Mt. Salem Open Bible Church in St. James, as members of the congregation are still in shock following Thursday night's devastating news that 24-year-old auditor Jhanelle Whittley, the daughter of their pastor, was brutally murdered in St. Ann.
"I got the news about 2:00 a.m. (Friday) but the person who called wasn't sure whether or not she was dead or hurt and in the hospital," said Marlon Grennion, a church brother and close family friend. "It was later that we got the shocking news that she was actually killed."
According to her family, Ms. Whittley, who was employed to the auditing firm KPMG Peat Marwick, left her Brandon Hill home, in Montego Bay, on Monday for St. Ann where she was in the process of auditing the accounts of an unnamed company. She was reportedly staying at the Crane Ridge Comfort Suite, in Ocho Rios, where her body was found shortly after 11:30 p.m. on Thursday.
Reports from the Ocho Rios police are that shortly after 11:20 p.m., they received an anonymous telephone call that the occupant of a particular room, which later turned out to Ms. Whittley, was in distress and required urgent assistance. A unit was reportedly dispatched to investigate.
Upon their arrival, the police reportedly found Ms. Whittley's nude body face down on the bed in the room. Her nose and neck appeared to have been broken and there were several bruise marks on her body, especially on her cheeks and around her eyes.
A police source at the Ocho Rios Police Station, told The Gleaner that preliminary investigations would seem to suggest that Ms. Whittley knew her killer. According to him, there
were no obvious signs of forced entry and there was nothing to suggest that a struggle had taken place in the room.
"We believe she knew the person who killed her," said the police source. "The key to the room was still in the outside of the door lock and except for her body, everything in the room appeared in good order."
Upon hearing the tragic news, members of Ms. Whittley's family and close friends rushed to Ocho Rios in the early hours of Friday morning. Her father, Pastor Victor Whittley, who was attending a retreat in Kingston, also broke his engagement and drove down to the resort town.
Shortly after 6:00 a.m., while driving by the Burger King establishment in the Ocean Village section of the town, a family member reportedly spotted Ms. Whittley's 1998 two-door silver Starlet motor car in the parking lot and alerted the police. When the lawmen arrived, they found the key to the vehicle on the drivers' seat and her laptop on the passenger seat.
While the police are yet to come up with a motive for the killing, it is being speculated that Ms. Whittley might have been murdered on account of incriminating evidence she might have uncovered on her job.
