Gloves, ski mask taken for forensic testing a year after being found

The two gloves — one blue and another white which were found one inside the other — were collected by police on January 6, 2007, when police conducted an exercise at Upper La Puerta in search of evidence relating to the kidnapping of Chaguanas businesswoman Vindra Naipaul-Coolman.

The gloves, along with a ski mask and cigarette butts, were taken for forensic testing in 2008, almost a year after they were found by police.

According to Supt John Frederick, he and other officers went to a hilly and forested area where two cigarette butts, a blue glove and white glove and a ski mask were found. Those items were also collected and placed in evidence bags.

Frederick said he submitted the items collected for testing in 2008 but up until then they were kept on a shelf in the property room at the Arouca Police Station, where the Region 2 Homicide Bureau is located. Frederick, who has been trained in crime scene investigations, admitted under cross examination that DNA was a material which can be affected by temperature and items should be kept refrigerated.

The gloves while at the Arouca Police Station were not kept refrigerated.

Frederick also admitted that fingerprints could be found on the inside of a glove and the tips of those found were cut off for testing.

He could not say what the results of the tests were as he did not have the certificate of analysis with the results. He also said he did not speak to anyone about the results nor did he have the opportunity to read the results.

It is the prosecution’s contention that Naipaul-Coolmn was murdered and her body dismembered in a small, red-brick house at Upper La Puerta Avenue, Diego Martin, before being temporarily buried in the hole.

She was kidnapped from the driveway of her Lange Park, Chaguanas, home on the night of December 19, 2006.

The day after the abduction, her family paid a $122,000 ransom for her release but Naipaul-Coolman was never freed nor was her body ever found.

On trial are Shervon ‘Buffy’ Peters; Keida Garcia, Marlon ‘Mad Man Marlon’ Trimmingham; Earl “Bobo’ Trimmingham; Ronald ‘22’ Armstrong; Antonio ‘Hedges’ Charles; Joel ‘Ninja’ Fraser; Lyndon ‘Iron’ James; Allan ‘Scanny’ Martins; Devon ‘Blackboy’ Peters; Anthony Dwayne Gloster, also called Anthony Peters and Jamile ‘WASA’ Garcia. The trial resumes today in the Port-of-Spain Second Criminal Court where Justice Malcolm Holdip is presiding.