Sordid saga of a murder case

THE CIRCUMSTANCES – the little we know – surrounding the 2006 murder of Vindra Naipaul-Coolman, 52, were horrific. But what has elapsed in the two decades since in the courts has been almost as terrible as that woman’s fate.

The Court of Appeal’s determination on June 9 that a group of Diego Martin men, who were acquitted of Ms Naipaul-Coolman’s murder and who subsequently sued for wrongful imprisonment and malicious prosecution, are entitled to civil damages awarded in 2021 by default cements this case’s status as one of the most bizarre and sordid within our criminal justice history.

From the moment the Xtra Foods CEO was kidnapped from the driveway of her Lange Park, Chaguanas, home on the night of December 19, 2006, the failures began. Anti-Kidnapping Squad officers were at the scene. Someone paid a ransom. But she was never rescued. Nor was a body found.

In contrast to the lack of answers, there has been no shortage of suspicion.

The group of men were held by police, charged, faced a preliminary inquiry and then, over several years, put on trial.

But the star witness recanted, claiming police coercion.

Ms Naipaul-Coolman’s husband also admitted to paying hush money in an extortion scheme, forcing the presiding trial judge to tell the jury: “We have to remember that Rennie Coolman is not before the court for killing his wife.”

In a rare and astonishing glimpse of jurisdictional turf battles, there was also conflict between evidence at trial by SAUTT officers and local police.

Along the way, it emerged at separate proceedings that Ms Naipaul-Coolman once sat on the Clico audit committee, a fact that had not been well known.

Not guilty verdicts were rendered, though two were ordered to face retrial.

However, more intrigue and mystery came when a former attorney general said the file in a civil lawsuit subsequently brought by the freed Diego Martin men against the state went “missing.” A retired judge was brought in to find it. He promptly did. It was a case of maladministration, pure and simple. The immediate cost to taxpayers is today $20 million, as upheld by the Court of Appeal.

This utterly shambolic chapter may yet come to an end given that an appeal is to be carefully weighed by the Ministry of the Attorney General.

Yet, whatever John Jeremie does with the litigation, there may never be closure for Ms Naipaul-Coolman’s family.

If they have suffered tremendously, so, too, have all citizens of this country, who are entitled to expect that in matters of grave wrongdoing, justice will be served. The accused men have had their right to be presumed innocent upheld in court. But the rule of law and the right to life – they remain terribly wounded by this unsavoury saga.