Rennie Coolman, the husband of murdered businesswoman Vindra Naipaul-Coolman, was investigated as a suspect in his wife’s kidnapping. Lead investigator in Naipaul-Coolman’s case, retired assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Nadhir Khan, made the admission yesterday as he was being cross-examined by defence attorneys for the 12 men currently on trial in the Port-of-Spain High Court for the crime.
Coolman’s possible involvement in the crime was raised by defence attorney Ulric Skerritt as he questioned Khan on whether he and his colleagues had investigated Coolman for paying a $75,000 bribe to avoid being prosecuted in the case. The issue of Coolman’s bribe has been raised by defence attorneys in the trial before.
However, yesterday was the first time it was revealed that Coolman was investigated by police as a suspect. Skerritt: “Did it not perk your interest, when Mr Coolman was paying $75,000 so nobody would lock him up?” Khan admitted that he had read of the incident in the newspapers but stated that there was a separate investigation into Coolman conducted by detectives of the now defunct Special Anti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt).
“There were a lot of things going on. I am not super-human,” Khan said as he explained why he did not personally interview Coolman. Skerritt: “Are you aware that as early as February 2007 Rennie Coolman was satisfied that his wife was dead?” “I can’t say what he was satisfied with,” Khan said as he maintained that he could not reveal the outcome of the parallel investigation into Coolman because he was not directly involved.
When he took the witness stand at the start of the trial last year, Coolman admitted to paying the bribe to a con woman but claimed he did so because he believed that he might have been unjustly prosecuted. Details of the incident were withheld from the jury as the woman accused of defrauding Coolman is still awaiting trial.
When confronted by an allegation that Coolman also told a crime scene investigator who visited his family’s home on the night his wife was kidnapped that he wished to “keep the matter private,” Khan said he was not aware of this. “I would find that highly irregular,” Khan said. Naipaul-Coolman was abducted from her Lange Park, Chaguanas, home, on December 19, 2006. A $122,000 ransom was paid by her family but she was not released and her body has never been found.
State prosecutors contend that she was held captive in a house in Upper La Puerta, Diego Martin, shared by three of the accused men, before she was eventually killed, dismembered and her body disposed of. The state’s main witness in the case Keon Gloster, who testified before Khan did, was allegedly present at the time of the murder and implicated the accused men in a series of sworn statements he gave to police.
Gloster, who is related to most of the accused men, has repeatedly claimed he was coerced by police into signing the statements. He has been deemed a hostile witness and his statements have been read to the jury. Khan’s cross-examination will continue when the trial resumes this morning.
Who’s in court
The dozen men before the jury and Justice Malcolm Holdip are Allan “Scanny” Martin, twin brothers Shervon and Devon Peters and their older brother Anthony Dwayne Gloster, siblings Keida and Jamille Garcia, brothers Marlon and Earl Trimmingham, Ronald Armstrong, Antonio Charles, Joel Fraser and Lyndon James. A 13th man, Raphael Williams, was charged with the crime but died in prison in 2011 of complications from sickle cell anaemia.