Jensen La Vende

The mur­der of out­spo­ken jour­nal­ist/tele­vi­sion host Mar­cia Henville yes­ter­day was de­scribed by for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose-Greaves as hor­rif­ic and painful.

An au­top­sy yes­ter­day showed that be­fore be­ing set ablaze, Henville, as she lay face down on her bed, was stabbed re­peat­ed­ly about the face and neck, vi­o­lent­ly struck in the back of the head and her throat was slit.

Speak­ing to the me­dia out­side the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, St Rose-Greaves, a close fam­i­ly friend, said: "Blunt force trau­ma and mul­ti­ple stab wounds, that is what it (her post mortem) says.

"It is painful and hor­rif­ic. We just have to try to get through this and give the chil­dren the sup­port that they need. We cant say what is the next step."

Henville, 51, was found dead in her home at Fi­delis Heights, St Au­gus­tine, on Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Po­lice and the Fire Ser­vices were called to the scene, alert­ed by a fire at the home, and dis­cov­ered Henville's body in her bed­room.

At the house, there were no ma­jor vis­i­ble signs of fire dam­age, as the fire ap­peared to have reached on­ly Henville's bed­room on the up­per floor.

Her hus­band, Shel­don Henville, suf­fered third de­gree burns about the body and is still at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Com­plex, Mt Hope. Homi­cide de­tec­tives are yet to in­ter­view him but po­lice sources said he was the last per­son to see Henville alive and is al­so a per­son "of keen in­ter­est" in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

One of Henville's friends, Rhon­da Rochard, own­er of the Ca­lyp­so Palace, a ca­lyp­so tent based in Mor­vant, said she spoke to her the morn­ing she was killed. She said Henville had been ex­cit­ed­ly talk­ing about a short fea­ture she had done on the tent.

She added that Henville lived for her chil­dren– Chioke, 20, and Nikeiya, 16–who were at home when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

"We have ded­i­cat­ed the en­tire month to Mar­cia be­cause that was the last place we saw her hap­py. I am over­whelmed, I am hap­py and sad, I don't know how to feel," Rochard said.

An­oth­er friend, Stephen De Shong, added: "To me, Mar­cia was the most down-to-earth lov­ing woman... car­ing... and would do any­thing for any­body with­out fear."

Those close to Henville said she had do­mes­tic prob­lems and was due to fi­nalise her di­vorce yes­ter­day. They said on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions she had com­plained of be­ing threat­ened but they nev­er took her se­ri­ous­ly giv­en her bold and sup­pos­ed­ly fear­less de­meanor. Fu­ner­al arrange­ments have not yet been fi­nalised.