Gardner guilty of second murder
Jailed killer Wolda Gardner has been convicted of murder for a second time.
A jury yesterday found Gardner, 35, guilty of the premeditated murder of Malcolm Augustus and using a firearm to commit an indictable act.
However his co-defendant, 30-year-old Patrick Stamp, left the court a free man after being cleared by the jury of all charges.
Prosecutors had alleged that Gardner was the man who pulled the trigger in the fatal shooting, which took place on Christmas Eve, 2012, while Mr Stamp had aided and abetted Gardner in the act. Both men denied the charges against them, maintaining their innocence.
The jury were not informed during the trial that Gardner is already serving a life sentence for the 2010 murder of George Lynch.
During the four-week Supreme Court trial, the jury heard several different accounts as to what happened on the evening of the shooting.
Area residents said that at around midnight on Christmas Eve they heard shouts and threats in a wooded area near the entrance of Anchorage Lane, followed by gunshots and screaming. When Police arrived on the scene shortly after midnight, they found Mr Augustus laying in bamboo bushes, bleeding and struggling to breath.
One witness testified that he found Mr Stamp standing by a damaged motorcycle, complaining that two men had stolen a quarter ounce of cannabis from him. He said the pair went looking for the robbers and found Gardner standing near a bamboo patch on the border of the St George’s Golf Course.
The witness said the men were joined by a fourth who arrived with a 4x4 as they attempted to flush someone out of the bush. The witness, however, said he fled after seeing Gardner produce a firearm. He returned a short while later to find a helmet, which he had left on the scene, but ran away after hearing gunfire.
Causwell Robinson, meanwhile, said he had stopped on the golf course to pump up a tyre when he was urged to pull his 4x4 closer to a bamboo bush. He said he saw both of the defendants in the area and, as he looked on, Mr Stamp began to struggle with someone in the bushes.
He then said he saw Gardner shoot the man, and admitted giving both of the defendants a ride out of the area.
Gardner himself told Police in an interview that he had been walking through the area talking on his cellphone when he was approached by two unknown men who began to chase him. He said he ran, dropping his cellphone in the process, and hid in a nearby fort until sunrise.
However on the stand he admitted that he had lied to Police, saying the story was intended to turn the officer’s attention to his phone records.
He told the jury that he had been approached by Mr Stamp and the witness, who asked him to tell the driver of a 4x4 to bring his vehicle closer to the bushes. While he was on the phone, he said he saw a scuffle in the bushes and heard a shot ring out. He said he then got into the 4x4 with Mr Robinson and Mr Stamp and was driven away from the scene.
Mr Stamp, meanwhile, told the court that two men attempted to steal the chain around his neck as he walked along Wellington Back Road. While the men were unsuccessful, he dropped a bag of cannabis in the struggle. When he returned to the area to look for it, he found a damaged bike in the road.
He said he met the witness, who became angry after hearing about the attempted robbery and suggested that the two men go searching for the robbers. The search brought the men to the bamboo bush, where he said a man jumped out of the bushes and grabbed him. He testified that he pushed the man away and had turned to run when he heard a gunshot.
During their investigation, Police found a cellphone with Gardner’s DNA in the area of the shooting, along with a hat belonging to Mr Stamp. They also discovered a series of short phone calls and messages between the two men on the evening of the murder. Gardner said he had been attempting to contact his co-defendant and others about Christmas hampers being given away, while Mr Stamp said that none of the communications ever came through.
After several hours of deliberation, the jury submitted written questions to the judge asking if it was possible to convict one of the defendants of premeditated murder and the other of “simple” murder.
Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons responded that while the jury could find Gardner guilty of either premeditated murder or simple murder, the lower offence of simple murder was not available to Mr Stamp.
She also said that Mr Stamp could only be convicted of premeditated murder if Gardner was first convicted of premeditated murder. As a result, if Gardner was found not guilty or guilty of simple murder, then they must find Mr Stamp not guilty.
Less than an hour later, the jury found Gardner guilty by a majority verdict of eleven to one. Mrs Justice Simmons subsequently released Mr Stamp, while Gardner was taken from the court in handcuffs. He is set to return to court next month for a sentencing date to be set.
The discovery of a cellphone at the scene of Malcolm Augustus’s murder linked convicted killer Wolda Gardner to two separate fatal shootings.
While the court heard that the phone was forensically linked to Gardner, it was actually registered to another man, who was subsequently questioned in connection to the shooting.
The man, who is now in witness protection, told officers that while the phone was registered in his name, it belonged to Gardner.
He also told Police that Gardner had access to a gun and had threatened to make him disappear, saying he had done it before.
He recounted an incident in 2011 in which the pair had got into a fight, with Gardner punching the witness in the mouth for something he said.
The witness alleged that Gardner then told him that he had previously ordered two people to commit “the shooting in Hamilton Parish”, referring to the murder of 40-year-old George Lynch.
Mr Lynch was fatally shot on May 5, 2010, while standing in his neighbour’s yard.
Gardner reportedly told the witness that Tamasgan Furbert, not Mr Lynch, was the intended target and identified the people who carried out the shooting.
Gardner and a second man, Rickai Dickinson, were subsequently found guilty of the premeditated murder of Mr Lynch.
The phone itself became evidence against Gardner in the murder of Mr Augustus, linking him to the scene of the crime.
Gardner told the jury he believed that the phone records would exonerate him because it would show he was on the phone at the time of the shooting.
However prosecutors noted that in his initial police interview he made no reference to the cellphone and denied that a photograph of himself — taken from the phone — was of him.
