A haunt­ing Cold War mys­tery is get­ting a fresh look on the Caribbean is­land of Grena­da, where of­fi­cials are try­ing to lo­cate the miss­ing re­mains of a Marx­ist prime min­is­ter ex­e­cut­ed near­ly 30 years ago dur­ing a coup that sparked a US in­va­sion. Mau­rice Bish­op was ma­chine-gunned by a fir­ing squad on Oc­to­ber 19, 1983, along with three mem­bers of his Cab­i­net and four oth­ers dur­ing the bloody up­heaval, and no one seems to know where the bod­ies end­ed up. Ru­mours have swirled for decades that US forces lat­er hid the re­mains to pre­vent the grave from be­com­ing a ral­ly­ing point for the slain leader's sup­port­ers or that a po­lit­i­cal ri­val dy­na­mit­ed the bod­ies. Grena­da's gov­ern­ment wants the mys­tery solved as a way of heal­ing the na­tion­al psy­che of this now-tran­quil coun­try of nut­meg-scent­ed forests known as "the spice is­land," which be­came a flash­point in the last days of the Cold War. Foren­sic an­thro­pol­o­gists re­cent­ly failed to find the re­mains in a stretch of hill­side ceme­tery in the cap­i­tal of St George's, but fur­ther search­es are planned. "It's im­por­tant for all con­cerned to bring some clo­sure to this chap­ter in Grena­da's his­to­ry," Fi­nance Min­is­ter Naz­im Burke said in his of­fice, just down a wind­ing road from the 17th cen­tu­ry fort where the 39-year-old Bish­op and the oth­ers, in­clud­ing his preg­nant mis­tress, were ex­e­cut­ed by Grena­di­an sol­diers fol­low­ing a coup by a rad­i­cal fac­tion of Bish­op's Cu­ba-backed par­ty.

This much is known about the re­mains: Af­ter the ex­e­cu­tion, one gun­man slit Bish­op's throat af­ter he was dead and cut off a fin­ger to steal a ring. The bod­ies were trans­port­ed to a mil­i­tary camp six miles out­side of town and par­tial­ly burned in a pit. Six days af­ter Bish­op's ex­e­cu­tion, about 7,000 US Marines and para­troop­ers, along with a few hun­dred se­cu­ri­ty forces from neigh­bor­ing is­lands, in­vad­ed Grena­da, top­pling the post-coup mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment. Wit­ness­es say the burned, de­com­pos­ing re­mains were trans­port­ed to the is­land's med­ical school and the body bags were lat­er brought to fu­ner­al di­rec­tor Leslie Bai­ley, who was tasked by the US mil­i­tary with bury­ing ca­su­al­ties from the con­flict. Bai­ley died with­out ever pin­point­ing where the body bags be­lieved to con­tain the re­mains of the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers were buried. Bai­ley's son, fu­ner­al di­rec­tor Clin­ton Bai­ley, said he wants to find the re­mains be­cause peo­ple "still point fin­gers" at his fam­i­ly every time the is­land cel­e­brates the an­niver­sary of the US in­va­sion, which was al­most uni­ver­sal­ly wel­comed by Grena­di­ans and is ob­served each Oc­to­ber 25 as a hol­i­day known as Thanks­giv­ing. "I will clear my fa­ther's name," said Clin­ton Bai­ley, who has car­ried out his own un­suc­cess­ful ef­forts to find Bish­op's re­mains.

Wild bones chase

Ex­perts sus­pect the re­mains of Bish­op and the oth­ers lie in un­marked graves in St George's sprawl­ing ceme­tery, where his sup­port­ers erect­ed a rough, un­marked bust of the slain rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader among a tan­gle of white mau­soleums and grave­stones, An in­ter­na­tion­al foren­sic team led by Mar­cel­la Sorg of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Maine was brought in by Grena­da's Con­fer­ence of Church­es, the gov­ern­ment and the is­land's med­ical school to find the re­mains. The team spent al­most two weeks in May ex­ca­vat­ing a rough­ly 25-foot stretch of the ceme­tery, first us­ing a back­hoe and then switch­ing to small hand trow­els. They scraped at the soil as bones be­gan to emerge from an un­marked grave yards from where a gravedig­ger dis­cov­ered three US mil­i­tary body bags a decade ago. Foren­sic ex­perts say the scat­tered bones found are ap­par­ent­ly not those of Bish­op or the oth­ers, ac­cord­ing to the Rev Sean Doggett, a Ro­man Catholic priest who acts as spokesman for the Con­fer­ence of Church­es. But Doggett said he is hope­ful that fu­ture digs could pro­vide an­swers. "They might be just out­side the area searched," Doggett said in an email from his na­tive Ire­land, where is va­ca­tion­ing. He did not say when the next search will take place, but of­fi­cials say they will pro­ceed once more mon­ey is avail­able. Pre­vi­ous search­es in the same ceme­tery, in­clud­ing a foren­sic ex­ca­va­tion or­gan­ised by Bish­op's daugh­ter Na­dia, failed as well.

Fol­low­ing every lead

At the ceme­tery, burly gravedig­ger Michael Mac­In­tosh said he's con­fi­dent a sus­tained search of the area will even­tu­al­ly turn up the long-sought re­mains."Af­ter all, the bod­ies have to be some­where," said Mac­In­tosh, stand­ing by the ex­ca­vat­ed area, in the shad­ow of the na­tion­al sta­di­um. "They couldn't have just dis­ap­peared in­to the air."Some Grena­di­ans be­lieve that US troops cal­cu­lat­ing­ly ob­scured Bish­op's bur­ial. "I think the sen­ti­ment was too over­whelm­ing for Bish­op at the time and the US want­ed to avoid a shrine," said Dr Ter­ry Mar­ryshow, a Cuban-trained med­ical doc­tor who once worked as a body­guard for Bish­op and leads a foun­da­tion that was in­stru­men­tal in get­ting the is­land's in­ter­na­tion­al air­port re­named af­ter the slain leader in 2009. (AP)