A MOTHER IS pleading for the police to do more to find the killer of her daughter.
And she’s calling on the constabulary to inform her if the case is still being investigated, and if it is, what the state of their investigation is.
Thelma Bayne’s plea comes after the 18th anniversary of her daughter Gillian’s badly decomposed body was pulled from a 70-foot well at Groves Plantation, St Philip, four days after she went missing on August 12, 1996.
Gillian, of Kirton’s, St Philip, was 18 years old at the time.
“At 67, I would like to know before I die who killed Gillian,” said a visibly distraught Bayne.
“Someone went into the house and killed Gillian and no one is saying anything. She did not kill herself. Hands did it. And that person is still walking around. Every day I live with that,” the retired assistant matron at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital added.
Saying she has not heard anything officially from the police in the last two to three years, Bayne said she was not satisfied that after the police had interviewed nearly 1 500 people they have not managed to arrest and charge anyone.
“I would like to plead with the police to reopen the case if it is closed. If it is not, at least inform me about what is happening.
“I would like to know who it is because it has to be someone out there.
?“I am not putting any dynamite under them, but if they did their work properly someone would have been held,” insisted Bayne, as tears began to flow.
?Yesterday, retired Commissioner of Police Grantley Watson said the force did not have any solid leads up to the time he retired in 2003, but they were proceeding with the investigation.
He said some people seemed to think that just because a case was not solved after a certain time that it was closed, but this was not so.
This was confirmed by the force’s public relations officer, Inspector David Welch. He told the SUNDAY SUN the Cold Case Squad was still operational and Gillian’s “case is being actively pursued”.
That squad was established in August 2007 to review unsolved murders.
At the time of its formation, there were at least 33 murders that had not been cleared up since 2002.
?The squad’s work has resulted in charges being laid against accused people in at least four outstanding cases.
sankaprice@nationnews.com