On Oc­to­ber 1, a par­tial skele­ton, be­lieved to be the re­mains of 19-year-old Maria Paul, was found buried near a house on Bab­wah Trace, Bar­bu­da Road, Waller­field. Paul was last seen alive on Sep­tem­ber 12 and was be­lieved to be mur­dered.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are still await­ing the re­sults of a DNA test to con­clu­sive­ly de­ter­mine whether the re­mains are those of Maria Paul.

On Oc­to­ber 4, the de­com­pos­ing body of Cunu­pia used car deal­er Sachel Kunge­be­har­ry was found in a shal­low grave in Pokhor Road, Long­denville. Kunge­be­har­ry was kid­napped by men dressed in tac­ti­cal po­lice gear.

The dis­cov­ery of the two sets of re­mains high­light­ed the preva­lence of the bod­ies be­ing dis­card­ed by their killers in a bid to con­ceal the crime.

In this Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tion, we look at how many more bod­ies may be undis­cov­ered in re­mote lo­ca­tions across T&T.

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Head of the Hunter’s Search and Res­cue team Capt Val­lence Ramb­harat says there are at least 15 ar­eas across Trinidad that are used to dis­pose of the bod­ies of mur­der vic­tims.

Ramb­harat, who has led the vol­un­teer group of hunters and track­ers in search of miss­ing per­sons through dense forests for years, said the bod­ies of mur­der vic­tims are typ­i­cal­ly found in re­mote cor­ners of north­east­ern, cen­tral and south­ern Trinidad.

In the north, he iden­ti­fied the Heights of Aripo, Heights of Gua­napo, Cu­mu­to, Waller­field, Cara­po and Dump Road in Ari­ma as ar­eas of con­cern.

In cen­tral Trinidad, bod­ies are of­ten found in aban­doned lands in Ca­roni, Mon Plaisir Road, Cunu­pia, Clax­ton Bay and Car­li Bay and fur­ther south, in ar­eas around the M1 and M2 Tasker Roads, Fyz­abad, as well as aban­doned ar­eas around Pt Fortin and San­ta Flo­ra.

These are ar­eas con­nect­ed by wind­ing net­works of dirt tracks and un­of­fi­cial clear­ings ac­cessed from mul­ti­ple di­rec­tions and dif­fi­cult to mon­i­tor.

“In terms of dis­pos­ing of bod­ies, you have hun­dreds of kilo­me­tres of roads that are agri­cul­ture ac­cess roads, old Ca­roni roads, old oil­field roads, you have or­phan roads and all these come in­to play when we have to search,” he said.

“It’s an ar­du­ous task, it takes days to search a des­ig­nat­ed area but as we do more and more of it, we’ve nar­rowed down par­tic­u­lar places where we have to look.”

Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the bod­ies of Ari­ma court clerk An­drea Bharatt in Feb­ru­ary 2021 and Kei­thisha Cud­joe, a year lat­er in the Heights of Aripo, that par­tic­u­lar por­tion of the North­ern Range has been a hotbed of ac­tiv­i­ty for his team.

“In the past four years, we know for a fact that there are oth­er un­of­fi­cial dump­ing sites,” Ramb­harat said.

“Since the An­drea Bharatt search, we’ve par­tic­i­pat­ed in a square me­ter by square me­ter search with the po­lice in 2021 and we did re­cov­er bones, but we don’t know what be­came of them (the re­mains).

“As a search team, we’re al­ways in the Heights of Aripo, we are al­ways in touch with the res­i­dents, they would nor­mal­ly do the main road go­ing up­hill to the vil­lage.”

Al­though the Heights of Aripo gets plen­ty of at­ten­tion, Ramb­harat said oth­er ar­eas across the coun­try might al­so be the fi­nal rest­ing place of miss­ing peo­ple.

In Au­gust, the charred re­mains of a man be­lieved to be Venezue­lan na­tion­al Wilmer Jose Mar­quez were found in a pineap­ple field in Dig­i­ty Trace, Pe­nal.

How­ev­er, an of­fi­cer from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions was hes­i­tant to de­scribe these ar­eas as “dump­ing grounds” for mur­der vic­tims, al­though he ad­mit­ted that cer­tain ar­eas are used more than oth­ers for dis­card­ing bod­ies.

The of­fi­cer said the po­lice are wary of cer­tain ar­eas.

“While we un­der­stand that there is a con­ve­nience for the dis­crete dis­pos­al (of bod­ies), we have not la­belled it as a dump­ing ground in­trin­si­cal­ly.

“There are se­clud­ed ar­eas where pa­trols are sparse­ly spo­radic that might be con­ve­nient to crim­i­nals want­i­ng to make a quick dump,” he said.

San­dra, 45, is a life­long res­i­dent of the Heights of Aripo. The vast for­est on the out­skirts of her vil­lage was once a com­fort­ing, peace­ful es­cape from the vi­o­lence of T&T’s ur­ban cen­tres. How­ev­er, since sev­er­al bod­ies have been found in the forests sur­round­ing her home in the Aripo Vil­lage, it no longer feels like the quaint rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of her girl­hood.

“Just dri­ving up here you could feel the heav­i­ness and weight on your shoul­ders,” she said. “So just imag­ine liv­ing up here, it wears on you af­ter a while.”

In the past three years, hu­man re­mains have been found down the steep precipice off Aripo Road which con­nects the vil­lage on the bor­der of Ari­ma and Va­len­cia in the foothills of the North­ern Range.

Every dis­cov­ery adds to the un­ease of Aripo vil­lagers.

In an in­ter­view in Ju­ly, San­dra said it had been a while since hu­man re­mains were found in the for­est, but she felt oth­er bod­ies re­main undis­cov­ered. That both­ers her every time she en­ters and leaves the vil­lage.

“Not long af­ter they found her (An­drea Bharatt’s re­mains) I thought they would have sent more of­fi­cers to comb the forests.

“There could be a lot of oth­er peo­ple buried there that we don’t even know about,” she said.

“You pass here some­times and smell all kinds of scents, we just as­sume it’s a dead dog or a cat, not know­ing it could be a per­son.”

Like many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties on the edge of the North­ern Range, Aripo has sev­er­al at­trac­tions for na­ture lovers in­clud­ing hik­ing trails, rivers, a wa­ter­fall and the Oil­bird Caves fur­ther north.

How­ev­er, San­dra said the dis­cov­ery of hu­man re­mains has led to a no­tice­able drop in vis­i­tors to the area.

She said she re­cent­ly in­vit­ed friends for a riv­er lime but the of­fer was po­lite­ly de­clined.

“Peo­ple just aren’t com­ing in here as they used to. We have a nice riv­er and they told me no way they’re com­ing here. From the time they hear Aripo, they al­ready made up their minds.”

She adds that res­i­dents avoid en­ter­ing and leav­ing the area af­ter dark as ban­dits have been known to wait in the bush­es for passers-by. This to­geth­er with the poor vis­i­bil­i­ty makes the vil­lage iso­lat­ed once the sun sets.

“If you go out the road, you have to come back in for a cer­tain time be­cause there’s al­ways the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­body might block the road.

“Some­times peo­ple come in af­ter hours and they say they see­ing strange ve­hi­cles just parked up, so they still do­ing their mis­chief.”

In Feb­ru­ary 2022, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, with as­sis­tance from the TT Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), over­saw the in­stal­la­tion of 14 elec­tric­i­ty poles and 32 LED street lights.

The project cost $296,786.11.

Gon­za­les said then that the project was ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue as more fund­ing be­comes avail­able. Asked if there were any plans to in­stall CCTV cam­eras at the lo­ca­tion, Gon­za­les said such de­ci­sions are not un­der his min­istry.

One res­i­dent said the in­stal­la­tion of the lights pro­vid­ed lit­tle re­lief as sev­er­al of them were dam­aged and reg­u­lar­ly need­ed re­pair­ing.

The man said while he felt safe in Aripo Vil­lage, the Aripo Road on the out­skirts of the vil­lage could be dan­ger­ous af­ter dark.

“If you hap­pen to bounce up some­body putting down a crime, that im­me­di­ate­ly puts you at risk too. Just see­ing some­one do­ing a crime means you can end up in the same prob­lems.”

Head of the North­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Miguel Mon­trichard ad­mit­ted that pa­trolling such treach­er­ous ter­rain is dif­fi­cult. These chal­lenges have stoked fears that por­tions of this is­land are dif­fi­cult to po­lice, so crim­i­nals are free to com­mit crimes with im­puni­ty.

Kei­thisha’s aunt still lives with grief

On Jan­u­ary 24, 2022, Kei­thisha Cud­joe said good­bye to her friends af­ter a lime in Bel­mont. The 21-year-old Diego Mar­tin na­tive had re­cent­ly moved to Co­corite and was ea­ger to re­turn home af­ter the evening out.

Her de­com­pos­ing body was found on Jan­u­ary 28 in the Heights of Aripo, 31 miles away from her home.

For Ayan­na Cud­joe, Kei­thisha’s aunt, adding to the grief of los­ing a close rel­a­tive is the dis­ap­pear­ance of her 19-year-old son last No­vem­ber.

Saleem Joseph went to vis­it a friend at the Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal but al­though he re­as­sured an aunt that he would be re­turn­ing home short­ly, the teen was nev­er seen again.

Re­call­ing the day she vis­it­ed the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre to iden­ti­fy Kei­thisha’s body, Cud­joe said the ad­vanced de­com­po­si­tion of the body was some­thing she would nev­er for­get.

“I re­mem­ber the pathol­o­gist ex­plain­ing to me what to ex­pect be­fore I could go in the room to iden­ti­fy her body. He said what I knew as my niece was not what I was go­ing to see and from that point the anx­i­ety hit me. I couldn’t breathe. When I saw my niece I had to ask how this per­son liv­ing with them­selves. I hope she is haunt­ing them,” she said.

Cud­joe said since Kei­thisha’s mur­der the fam­i­ly has not re­ceived up­dates from the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors on whether a sus­pect was ever ar­rest­ed or charged for the mur­der.

“It’s just some­thing we all have to live with it seems. She was some­thing to us and the way they just threw her away is hard,” she said.

Cud­joe waits for her son’s re­turn but ad­mits that liv­ing with­out know­ing what hap­pened to him has put a strain on the fam­i­ly. She tries to stay strong for her daugh­ter, Saleem’s sis­ter but mourns him pri­vate­ly.

“I won’t get to hear him say, Mom, you’re go­ing to be a grand­moth­er. I don’t know what hap­pened to him. All I can do is sit and wait,” she said

Bod­ies dumped (put in a box)

• Feb­ru­ary 2021 - the body of 23-year-old law clerk An­drea Bharatt was found at the bot­tom of a precipice in the Heights of Aripo, days af­ter she en­tered a taxi in Ari­ma.

• Two days af­ter An­drea Bharatt’s re­mains were found, po­lice in a fol­low-up sweep of the area found a bag con­tain­ing a sep­a­rate set of re­mains that have still not been iden­ti­fied.

• Jan­u­ary 24, 2022 - Kei­thisha Cud­joe, 21, left a lime with friends in Bel­mont. Her de­com­pos­ing body was found on Jan­u­ary 28 in the Heights of Aripo.

• April 2022 - a de­com­pos­ing body was found near the site where An­drea Bharatt’s body had been found a year ear­li­er. In­ves­ti­ga­tors have not been able to con­firm the iden­ti­ty of the in­di­vid­ual.

• Ju­ly 18 - the body of Bran­don Bruce, 21, was found on Smith­field Road, Aripo. The head was cov­ered in plas­tic held in place with duct tape and there was a sin­gle gun­shot wound to the stom­ach.

• Au­gust 10 - a farmer found charred re­mains be­lieved to be Wilmer Jose Mar­quez, in Dig­i­ty Road, Pe­nal.

• Au­gust 22 - the tor­so of a man was found wrapped in a large plas­tic bag in Hold­er Trace, Barataria. A skull was found near­by to­geth­er with a piece of scalp.

• Oc­to­ber 1 - a par­tial skele­ton, be­lieved to be 19-year-old Maria Paul was found near a house on Bar­bu­da Road, Waller­field.

• Oc­to­ber 4 - the de­com­pos­ing body of Cunu­pia busi­ness­man Sachel Kunge­be­har­ry was found in a shal­low grave in Pokhor Road, Long­denville.