Trial into murder of elderly couple starts

BENEDICT INNIS went to visit his 70-year-old grandmother Ursula, and discovered her decapitated body in her bathroom. Not far away, underneath an outdoor water tank, the decomposing body of the old woman’s common-law husband, Selwyn Grant, 65, was also found. On trial for the elderly couple’s murders are their neighbours, Mookesh Chandardath, 35, and Zanna Andrews, 26. Chandardath and Andrews, are before Justice Herbert Volney in the San Fernando First Assizes. The accused are charged with committing the murders on a date unknown between July 31 and September 17, 1999, at the elderly couple’s home in Penal. 

Acting Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (South) Joan Honore-Paul is leading the State’s evidence before Justice Volney and a jury of six women and six men, with two alternates. Honore-Paul said the elderly couple lived at  Allen Drive, Penal and also owned the next-door property in which Chandardath lived. Sometime after the murders, Chandardath brought his new bride Maria Charles and mother-in-law to live in the house, but they were plagued by, “a bad smell.” Paul said: “From the time they smelt this pungent, bad smell and in the six weeks they lived there, they would often throw disinfectant outside.” According to the State’s evidence, in early August, Roger Thompson, a friend of Chandardath, went to assist him in moving furniture items from the pensioners’ house to his home next-door. Paul told the court that Thompson found Innis’ decapitated body in the bathtub and asked Chandardath: “You trying to get me in trouble or what?”