Andrea Downer, Gleaner Writer
Clement Beckford, patient in a Bahamian mental health institution, is trying to get his relatives' help in bringing him back to his homeland, Jamaica. - CONTRIBUTED
This is the final instalment in a series of articles on Clement Beckford, a Jamaican who languished in a Bahamian prison for 25 years and is now seeking to return home.
IT SEEMS Clement Beckford did a lot more than just worry, the night he murdered his girlfriend, Evelyn McKinney, because by 6 o'clock the next morning, he went by her sister's house and pretended he had no idea where she was.
But based on his confession to the police, he was simply trying to deflect suspicion from himself. "... I was scared and did not want them to know what had happened ...."
He returned home and left again, this time, for work. He called McKinney's workplace about 10:00 a.m. and asked to speak to her, before visiting another of his girlfriend's sisters to ask if she had seen McKinney. Beckford told her that he had not seen his lover since she left home for work the day before, at 8:00 a.m.
He again telephoned McKinney's workplace for the second time that day and asked to speak to her. He told police that he telephoned the second time "... to make sure of what I was doing ...." He was leaving nothing to chance, as he attempted to mask the crime.
REPORTED GIRLFRIEND MISSING
By midday, the pressure became too much. Beckford began to crack. He asked his boss for some time-off and did not return to work until two weeks later. He went to the police that evening and reported his girlfriend missing. He also went to the media with the same story. But his moves were carefully calculated ...
"I act as if I was searching for her for about a week, then I stopped, saying to myself that I left it to the police ...."
When her body was found about two weeks later, he told police that it was not his girlfriend; however, when McKinney's relatives identified the body by the black shoes she was wearing, which Beckford should also have recognised, the noose began to tighten around his neck. He was taken into police custody and questioned until he broke down and confessed to killing his girlfriend.
As he had told his mother and his uncle-in-law in his letters, he told police that it was jealousy that made him kill her. He said he found a book in McKinney's handbag with a list of male names and their phone numbers the week before he killed her. He admitted that they had fought bitterly over the phone numbers the week leading up to her death.
"... This cause(d) me to grieve for jealously, which cause me to behave rageful (sic) ever since with her ...." he said.
Beckford spent almost twice the number of years he was sentenced to, behind bars.
YEARNS TO RETURN HOME
Now 54 and hampered by a knee injury which he said he sustained in prison, he yearns to return to the little district, Cauldwell, in Hanover, where he grew up.
The Gleaner was unable to get the psychiatric hospital, where he is now a patient, to release an evaluation of Beckford's mental state, but he is a resident of the Eloise Penn Ward, one of two wards at the hospital reserved for patients with acute mental-health problems.
Twenty-five years after being incarcerated, and more than a year after being released from prison, Beckford is still locked up. He has exchanged the harsh conditions of the Fox Hill prison in the Bahamas for the Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre, a cheerful-looking cluster of buildings with cotton candy pink walls.
Beckford is still waiting for his family to provide documents to prove that he is Jamaican, so he can return home. With very little to do but chase thoughts that dart in and out of his mind, it is not hard to imagine that memories of a murder committed more than two decades ago, are among the spectral thoughts that haunt him.
