Cropper’s widow IDs man in bank video

Widow of murdered agricultural consultant John Cropper yesterday identified her great nephew as the young man seen in the film footage projected in the courtroom of the Port-of-Spain Second Criminal Court. The projections were of video recordings taken at the Republic Bank’s Tunupuna West branch and Promenade Centre on December 12 and 13, 2001 respectively, where the man was seen conducting several transactions. The bodies of John, 59, Canadian resident Maggie Lee, 83, and French resident Lynette Lichglow Pearson, 51, were found with their throats slit at the Cropper’s Mt Anne Drive home at Second Avenue in Cascade on December 13, 2001. They had reportedly been murdered sometime between December 11 and 13. Two men, 21-year-old Daniel Agard and 25-year-old Lester Pitman, both of Upper Bushe Street, Maitagual, San Juan, are before Justice Herbert Volney charged with the murders.

John’s wife, Angela Cropper, said before the date on which her loved ones had been murdered, she had to go abroad for two weeks and her sister (Pearson) had agreed to stay with their mother (Lee).  Lee was ill at the time. Cropper said the first time she had met her niece’s son, Daniel Agard, was when he had attended a function at her home in late 1998. She said the next time she saw him was in March, 1999, when he worked as a labourer on renovations that were being done to the front of her house. At that time, she said, the family had occupied the bedroom area of the house and the workmen did not have access to it. The area, she said, was secured by a grilled gate at the entrance of the corridor leading to the bedrooms. However, under cross-examination by Agard’s attorney Mario Merritt, Cropper admitted there was one time when Agard had entered that area.

Cropper, who is retired from the UN Development Prog-ramme, said the next time Agard came to her house was late in 2000 following an invitation for him to come to speak to her and John about financial assistance to start a food business. The visit lasted for about an hour, she said. On the next occasion in August, 2001, Cropper said, Agard had called to say he wanted to come to the house to collect a pair of boots her brother had brought for him from Tobago and for a recommendation from her. She said he arrived between 4 pm and 5 pm and she spoke to him from the kitchen window. She said she told him she had left the boots in a bag outside the garage door and he had collected it. However, she said, he refused to leave and repeatedly asked her for money and to let him in.  Cropper said he also kept asking her to speak to John. At one time, she said, he had climbed to the top of the gate. Moments later, he suddenly appeared on the front porch and she said she eventually had to call John.

The widow said John informed Agard that he was trespassing and ordered him to return down the “track” he had used to enter the premises and to go to the front gate. She said Agard obeyed and John spoke to him from the garage, while Agard stood outside the garage. She said sometime between 7 pm and 8 pm, the youth was escorted off the premises by the police, who had been called several times during the course of the evening. Cropper said the last time she had spoken to her husband was on December 9, 2001, when she had called him from Indonesia. After that, she said, she had called the house on the evenings of December 11, 12 and 13 but had received no response. When she called again on the morning of December 14, she said her brother Ken Persad answered the phone and informed her of the demise of her husband, mother and sister. She returned home on the evening of December 15 and found her house in disarray and several “large items” missing. Among those items she listed as missing were two television sets, a laptop, watches, cash, a debit card, a Honda Civic and several items of jewelry, including a custom-made ring with 12 stones she and her 11 siblings had given to their mother.

Cropper said she went to the Police Headquarters on Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain to identify a jewelry box that was removed from her home by the police on December 13. The box, she said, used to be kept on a shelf in a cupboard in her bedroom. During the time that renovations were being done in the bedroom area, the box was secured in a large cabinet in the living room and no one had access to it. Sometime during the first half of January, 2002, Cropper said she received a statement for the chequing account she had jointly held with her husband at the Long Circular Mall branch of Republic Bank.  She noticed the account was in overdraft and that a total of $4,200 had been withdrawn from the account via an ATM card between December 12 and 14. Cropper admitted that she had a “falling out” with Agard in May 1999 and that she had prohibited him from coming to the house. However, she said, both she and John still maintained a relationship with Agard and assisted him with money and clothes on several occasions.
Hearing resumes today.