Killed, dis­mem­bered and her body dis­posed of, the case of well-loved busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man, the CEO of Xtra Foods Su­per­mar­ket, gripped na­tion­al at­ten­tion for close to a decade.

In ex­cess of $60 mil­lion spent and ten years lat­er, on May 30, 2016, eight of the ten men ac­cused of her mur­der have walked free. Two of the oth­er ac­cused–Lyn­don James and Earl Trim­ming­ham–will face re­tri­als. In the end, the tri­al brought no clo­sure. The out­come left cit­i­zens up­set and was de­scribed by many as a trav­es­ty of jus­tice.

Naipaul-Cool­man's rel­a­tives were mum about the out­come of the case which caused them and many oth­ers that she loved years of an­guish and left them with emo­tion­al scars that may nev­er be healed.

One of the men who was freed, An­tho­ny Gloster, has ap­pealed for jus­tice for the Naipaul fam­i­ly. He said the re­al per­pe­tra­tors of the crime must be found and brought to jus­tice.

There are oth­er un­quan­ti­fied costs–the cost for pho­to copy­ing ma­te­r­i­al, ev­i­den­tial doc­u­ments, a com­ple­ment of staff for the judge hear­ing the tri­al, pay­ment for mar­shalls and se­cu­ri­ty. There was al­so a cost in­volved for the 16 ju­rors, in­clud­ing the pro­vi­sion of meals. Twelve of them sat on the tri­al and there were four sup­ple­men­tal.

Se­nior Coun­sels Is­rael Khan, Dana See­ta­hal and Gilbert Pe­ter­son were the main play­ers re­tained by the State to pros­e­cute. Khan was paid $1.5 mil­lion, Pe­ter­son was paid $1.2 mil­lion and See­ta­hal was paid $900,000. Oth­er at­tor­neys were al­so re­tained, tak­ing the to­tal close to $7 mil­lion.

One of the pros­e­cu­tors, See­ta­hal, was mur­dered in 2014, and se­cu­ri­ty was in­creased for the two oth­er pros­e­cu­tors in­volved in the mat­ter.

And then there's the cost for de­fence at­tor­neys from Le­gal Aid, which was put at $15 mil­lion. A note penned by Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore was tak­en to Cab­i­net for a spe­cial arrange­ment to be made to pay re­tain­er fees to the de­fence at­tor­neys.

The note to Cab­i­net re­quest­ed a month­ly pay­ment of $30,000 a month for the du­ra­tion of the case.

There were ten at­tor­neys who each had in­struct­ing at­tor­neys who were paid $20,000 dol­lars a month. Be­cause Le­gal Aid does not have its own bud­get the cost was borne by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Added to that, there were pay­ments for lawyers from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion's (DPP) Of­fice who as­sist­ed, DNA test­ing which had to be done abroad, wit­ness­es had to be brought in from abroad, and the cost of prepa­ra­tion for the tri­al. Those costs were es­ti­mat­ed to be in ex­cess of $7 mil­lion.

And then there was the cost of the up­keep of the ten ac­cused for ten years. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said the cost to main­tain a pris­on­er month­ly is $25,000. That comes up to a cost of at least $30 mil­lion.

So af­ter a tri­al which last­ed two years, the 12-mem­ber ju­ry re­turned a not guilty ver­dict for eight of the ten ac­cused. DPP Roger Gas­pard de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion of his of­fice to go to tri­al de­spite what de­fence at­tor­neys said was "in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence."

Gas­pard told the me­dia out­side the Hall of Jus­tice: "In the first place, a no-case sub­mis­sion would have been made in re­spect of this mat­ter, not so? And the judge would have found that the case was fit and prop­er to be heard be­fore the ju­ry, not so? Well if it passed the judge at the no-case sub­mis­sion case what would that tell you, not that there is suf­fi­cient pri­ma fa­cie ev­i­dence to go be­fore the ju­ry, not so?"

Asked what im­pact this would have on oth­er mat­ters, the DPP re­spond­ed: "We tend to learn from every case we do."

What the pros­e­cu­tors say

Both the pros­e­cu­tion and de­fence felt jus­tice was served. Both sides de­scribed the not-guilty ver­dict by the ju­ry as "a fair and just out­come."

Lead pros­e­cu­tor Is­rael Khan, SC, said: "The or­di­nary God-fear­ing peo­ple that sat on this ju­ry had a rea­son­able doubt in the case and they ac­quit­ted."

Khan al­so de­fend­ed the state's pros­e­cu­tion of the ac­cused men say­ing "the pros­e­cu­tion nev­er wins or los­es. We present the case to the best of our abil­i­ty and leave it for the ju­rors to de­cide."

Pe­ter­son, mean­while, said it was a ground­break­ing tri­al, one which for the first time ever lo­cal­ly saw the use of video link from a court­room in Lon­don from where two wit­ness­es gave ev­i­dence. Pe­ter­son de­scribed it as "one of the most in­ter­est­ing cas­es for crim­i­nal law stu­dents in this coun­try...it was long, com­plex, thor­ough, very in­volved, and any­thing you can think of in crim­i­nal law arose."

Pe­ter­son said the coun­try must see this as "no cost is too high for jus­tice."

Ma­haraj: Cas­es must be done quick­er, change crim­i­nal pro­ce­dure

Ac­cord­ing to for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, there needs to be a prop­er as­sess­ment of the Naipaul-Cool­man tri­al.

Ma­haraj, who was AG when no­to­ri­ous crime lord Dole Chadee and his gang of eight were ex­e­cut­ed on June 3, 1999, for the 1994 mur­ders of sev­er­al mem­bers of the Ba­boolal fam­i­ly in Williamsville, said while it would be un­fair to make a gen­er­al as­sess­ment of the tri­al, he be­lieves the whole crim­i­nal pro­ce­dure is wrong and needs to be re­viewed.

Ma­haraj, who had put his po­lit­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion at stake as he fought every at­tempt by lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Chadee and his men to have the sen­tence lift­ed, said when­ev­er a tri­al lasts as long as this one did, just over two years, "it is dif­fi­cult to get a con­vic­tion."

Ma­haraj said when three se­nior coun­sels are re­tained to pros­e­cute a tri­al it im­me­di­ate­ly "gives the ju­ry the im­pres­sion that your case is bad."

He said the length of the tri­al would have "put a lot of pres­sure on the ju­ry to re­mem­ber de­tails and the im­pact of ev­i­dence." It would al­so have been dif­fi­cult "for a judge to re­mem­ber the force of the ev­i­dence," Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj said the ju­ry was hu­man and "they go home, they have their own lives, they have their own prob­lems, so it's dif­fi­cult for them." But he said he ful­ly sup­ports "tri­al by ju­ry be­cause they as­sess ev­i­dence and that has been the ba­sis of a fair tri­al."

The for­mer AG said even if there were no ju­ry and three judges had to hear a tri­al like the Naipaul-Cool­man tri­al where the case lasts over two years, "it would still be a prob­lem."

He con­tends that "if a prop­er as­sess­ment is done, the re­sult would be that cas­es should be done in a quick­er time."

His sug­ges­tion is that crim­i­nal tri­als should have a free flow of ev­i­dence.

In the Naipaul-Cool­man tri­al the ju­ry was put out of the court­room sev­er­al times for voir dires to be heard.

Ma­haraj said the crim­i­nal pro­ce­dure should be changed.

He is sug­gest­ing that there be a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence be­fore the start of crim­i­nal tri­als in which all ob­jec­tions in law are raised by at­tor­neys and de­cid­ed by the judge.

This, he said, would clear the way so that when the tri­al starts "and the ju­ry is em­pan­elled you have a free flow of ev­i­dence which will not take two years."

Ini­tial­ly, it was ex­pect­ed that the tri­al would have last­ed be­tween four and sev­en months, but it even­tu­al­ly went for over two years.

It start­ed in March 2014 and end­ed in May 2016.?

COST TO THE COUN­TRY

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial close to the case, the cost of the tri­al was about

$60 mil­lion.

UN­OF­FI­CIAL COST OF TRI­AL

STATE PROS­E­CU­TORS–$7M

DE­FENCE & IN­STRUCT­ING AT­TOR­NEYS (Le­gal Aid, etc)–$15M

DNA, PO­LICE, DPP,

PREPA­RA­TION FOR TRI­AL–$7M

COST FOR UP­KEEP OF

PRIS­ON­ERS–$30M

ABOUT THE AB­DUC­TION

On the evening of De­cem­ber 19, 2006, Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man was ab­duct­ed out­side her Lange Park home as she pulled in­to her dri­ve­way af­ter a day at work. A ran­som was de­mand­ed for her safe re­lease. Some of the ran­som mon­ey was paid ($122,000) but she was not freed. The mys­tery of what hap­pened to the busi­ness­woman re­mains un­solved as her body was nev­er found.

Short­ly af­ter her kid­nap­ping the pub­lic in­ter­est was piqued as three mem­bers of the Ja­maat Al-Mus­li­men con­fessed to their role in the in­ci­dent. They claimed Naipaul was mur­dered and her body dis­mem­bered.

They claimed that on the night of De­cem­ber 19, they were "giv­en spe­cif­ic in­struc­tions' to kid­nap Naipaul-Cool­man and take her to a house in La Puer­ta, Diego Mar­tin. A ran­som de­mand was to have been made which they ex­pect­ed would have been paid. But the kid­nap­ping was botched when one of the kid­nap­pers fired a shot which struck the busi­ness­woman in the breast.

It is re­port­ed the busi­ness­woman was raped by one of her ab­duc­tors, and died two days af­ter be­ing kid­napped.

The coun­try heard, dur­ing the tri­al, that in a state of pan­ic the ab­duc­tors de­cid­ed to dis­mem­ber her body. It is re­port­ed that Naipaul-Cool­man's body was cut in­to pieces on a pool ta­ble with a pow­er saw, then wrapped in a cloth and tak­en to cen­tral Trinidad where it was dis­posed of.

Act­ing on a tip-off, po­lice searched a pond at De­pot Road, in Long­denville, for an en­tire week from Jan­u­ary 16 to 20, but her body was nev­er found. Naipaul-Cool­man's fa­ther, Naipaul Sukdeo, plead­ed with the kid­nap­pers to give in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice to help find his daugh­ter's re­mains so that the fam­i­ly could get clo­sure. It nev­er hap­pened. His health de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and he died in No­vem­ber 2010, four years af­ter his daugh­ter was kid­napped and mur­dered.

Dur­ing the tri­al the court heard that Naipaul-Cool­man's hus­band, Ren­nie Cool­man, was con­sid­ered a sus­pect by mem­bers of the Spe­cial An­ti Crime Unit. Cool­man, how­ev­er, main­tained that he played no role in his wife's ab­duc­tion and mur­der. He ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, to pay­ing $75,000 to a woman, who claimed to be from the Of­fice of the DPP, for him not to be wrong­ful­ly charged and pros­e­cut­ed for mur­der.