Pain endures for the family of Chavelle Dillon-Burgess even as the conviction of her former partner, Kamal Worrell, closes out his three-month trial for her murder.

Thelma-Jean Wong, grandmother of Ms Dillon-Burgess, whose remains have not been found, said she had lain awake after the trial wondering if Worrell might eventually reveal the fate of her body.

“I was thinking about it last night, wondering if he would ever confess what really happened, where he had put her,” Mrs Wong told The Royal Gazette.

“The toughest part, although he has been found guilty, is to not know where Chavelle is, to never find her body, so that we could have closure or give her a funeral.

“He was found guilty. But Chavelle has never been found.”

Mrs Wong said the “next hardest part” was reckoning with the trauma experienced by the couple’s son, Kamal, now 5.

“I can’t imagine what that little boy had been through, because they were all living together when all this abuse was going on.”

Mrs Wong said she last saw Worrell other than in court when he brought the boy to her house to stay on Sunday while he went to church.

“He stayed with me all day Sunday and was picked up on Monday morning,” she said.

She added, of the boy’s father: “We still talk.”

Mrs Wong said: “Little Kamal is the main one. I am so sorry for my great-grandchild.”

She said that in earlier years the child had shown signs of distress, such that “we could hardly control him”.

“We didn’t know what it was he was going through, and we could not tell, but seeing that was so hard.”

Worrell was incarcerated three times during the ordeal, leaving Mrs Wong to care for the child in tandem with Worrell’s mother.

“The two of us were working with him.”

The child was also being home-schooled by Worrell.

Mrs Wong said: “He loved that boy. When he asked for bail yesterday, at the verdict, I think he did because he wanted to go and check on him.”

She added: “We would just love to have little Kamal and put him in school — he has not been in school, and he loves to be around other children.

“I worry if he will be affected by all of this.”

Mrs Wong said she took comfort in her staunch Seventh-Day Adventist faith. The church’s work includes prayer ministry with people behind bars.

“A lot of people come out changed,” she said. “He can change.

“I pray that God will reach his heart, and I pray this will never happen to another woman and child.”

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