Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Apart from cel­e­brat­ing his birth­day, Matthew Bar­douille had big plans this year, in­clud­ing buy­ing a car, start­ing a new job and build­ing his home. Sad­ly, the fa­ther of three went miss­ing on De­cem­ber 17.

Af­ter tire­less search­es, an anony­mous caller led his rel­a­tives to Fair­field in Princes Town on Fri­day around 2.30 pm, where his de­com­pos­ing body was found tied to a tree in some bush­es. His neck and hands were al­so tied.

Bar­douille, a small con­trac­tor, would have turned 39 years old to­mor­row. In­stead, on that day his rel­a­tives might be at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre for the au­top­sy to de­ter­mine how he was killed.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, his old­er sis­ter Crys­tal Bar­douille said he was last seen alive in Princes Town on De­cem­ber 16. He had col­lect­ed mon­ey from his broth­er to pay work­ers and went to a bar. She said on his way home short­ly af­ter mid­night on De­cem­ber 17, he got a phone call and turned around. She be­lieves that the phone call—which was from a blocked num­ber—is key to un­rav­el­ling what hap­pened to him.

She said it was strange that her broth­er’s slip­pers were sub­se­quent­ly found at the back of his moth­er’s home and his phone and wal­let were dis­cov­ered at the back of his broth­er’s home, a short dis­tance away. While she thanked the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team and every­one who as­sist­ed in search­ing for him, she was up­set over the po­lice re­sponse, or lack there­of.

“We beg for help, and we did not get help from the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion. I am be­ing se­ri­ous. Every evening I leave work and by that sta­tion. Every evening we leave work, we join to­geth­er; we comb­ing that bush, even where we find him, we comb there. The Princes Town Sta­tion, they came one night for about half an hour, a group of them, the first night, and that was it, and we nev­er get any as­sis­tance again. All the footage we show them, help we link it nah, we did not get no as­sis­tance from the Princes Town Sta­tion.”

She was clue­less about why her broth­er was mur­dered.

“He is not a smok­er. He is not a drinker. He is a girls’ man, al­ways jol­ly, al­ways smil­ing ... go crack a joke with a heavy voice. I am not tak­ing up for my broth­er but he was in noth­ing that we know of, and he was a jol­ly per­son.”

Crys­tal said her broth­er’s youngest child turned four on Jan­u­ary 8. He lived with Bar­douille. His oth­er two chil­dren, 14 and 18, live with their moth­ers. At­tempts to reach ACP South/Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar for a re­sponse to the rel­a­tive’s com­plaints were un­suc­cess­ful.