Lagoon Park murder accused Robert Blair Tucker claimed he told victim Stanley Lee that he was going to get to see God as he stabbed him, a Supreme Court jury heard yesterday.

After five days of questioning, Tucker laid out how he killed Mr. Lee by repeatedly stabbing him in Lagoon Park on July 28, 2001 because the burly American had threatened him and had touched him threateningly.

As Det. Sgt. Jerry Laws read out a total of five statements by Tucker and co-defendant Terranz (Monster) Smith, their web unravelled with the men ending up pointing the finger at each other.

Tucker, Smith and James Alan (Spook) Dill deny killing Mr. Lee - known to them as Sean Russells - after drugs they had imported were found to be of low quality.

Known to the US Government as Stanley Lee, New York State as Sean Russells and New York State Prisons as Eddie Montalvo, Mr. Lee - lying sprawled in trees - was shown to Police by Smith on the morning of August 9.

“That's the truth this time,” Tucker told Det. Sgt. Terrance Maxwell at 12.35 a.m. on August 14 after a nearly hour-long statement.

In it, Tucker explained he was “wide open” in anger and “pissed off beyond pissed off” at being threatened on the morning of July 28 after he visited Mr. Lee at the Windsong Guest House - a room he had been paying for.

During earlier questioning, Tucker had first pointed the finger at Smith but Smith later recanted his earlier statements once he learned Tucker had turned on him.

When Det. Sgt. Maxwell opened the questioning, asking “Before I begin, do you have anything to say” regarding the death of “Sean Russells”, Tucker said: “I had a part in his death. I stabbed him.”

Tucker said he went to Windsong to confront Mr. Lee about the guest house bill, but was told that he in fact owed the American money.

“I was giving him money left and right,” Tucker told Police. “He said I owed him money because of the cocaine. I said to him that s**t was garbage and nobody could make any money off of it.

“He walked toward me, putting his hands in my chest. He said ‘you don't know me'. I said ‘no bro, you don't know me'. He grabbed a chair and he proceeded to swing at me but he missed and I walked out and left.”

How were you feeling at this point?” Det. Sgt. Maxwell asked.

“I was wide open. I was wide open,” Tucker replied.

“Were you annoyed?” the veteran cop asked.

“I was really pissed off beyond pissed off. The whole day it was all I could do to calm down. I couldn't calm down,” Tucker said.

He explained that Mr. Lee visited him at his Astwood Close, Pembroke home at 11 a.m., demanding “his stuff” and he told co-defendant James Alan (Spook) Dill to get a knife from a butcher's block in his kitchen and another knife from a drawer and to hide them in his pants.

From there they headed westward, with Mr. Lee on his own cycle and Dill riding with Tucker as pillion passenger on another cycle.

“I said to him that we were going to get these drugs,” Tucker explained.

While on the South Shore, they met with his friend Nathan (Dirty) Darrell.

“Dirty asked Sean about the hotel bill,” he continued.

“Sean went right off on him. He said ‘why are you asking about that lady's money?'. Sean said ‘what about my money?'.”

The men made a stop at the Boaz Island gas station, rode into Ireland Island North into the Dockyard area before making their way back southward onto Ireland Island South and Lagoon Park.

When asked how he was able to entice Mr. Lee to the secluded park, Tucker said: “I don't really know. I just said follow me. I wasn't really speaking to the guy…

“He was asking where was the stuff. I lit a cigarette and I looked at his back for about a minute and I just struck him in the back.

“The knife broke and I thought ‘F**k! He's got a hard back'. There's a piece of the blade still up there you know. I was chasing him and he tripped and fell.”

Tucker explained how he dropped to a knee and stabbed Mr. Lee in his left side just above the pelvis, before continuing: “I was talking to him. I said ‘you remember when you said you see God up here? Well, now you're going to actually meet him'. He said ‘please don't kill me. Please don't kill me'. I said ‘I'm not going to kill you'.

“He wasn't really dead when we left him, you know. He was still breathing, he was taking deep breaths,” Tucker added, saying the man's breath did become shallower.

In the statement, Tucker said Smith was not involved in the murder, but was just a “stupid a**” who was told about the killing after it happened and got the police involved.

In response to Det. Sgt. Maxwell, Tucker said of Smith: “He's just a stupid a** who found the body. I told him about it and he got caught on the break-in charge. You guys would never have found the body for six, seven years.”

Tucker admitted suggesting that the body be burned to destroy evidence, saying: “I was going to burn all of Somerset if I had to.

“Terry thought he could handle it. That he could take the heat (of a Police investigation). But he's too dumb.

“He went up to the site and removed the guy's bike. He hid it in the trees,” Tucker concluded.

In earlier statements Tucker told detectives two women, “Angel Satina”, whom he thought was Latin American, and “Elenora Francoise”, a Trinidadian with an American accent, were “basically here on vacation and to do a job”.

And Smith told Police that Mr. Lee said he came to Bermuda as an “overseer” for Tucker's contacts abroad - to whom he owed $30,000.

Tucker's “failure to update” Mr. Lee on the sales of - or inability to sell - the drug made the American “hostile”, Smith said.

And he later noted Tucker's demeanour when he joked with him about seeing Mr. Lee on Court Street, saying Tucker became very quiet and later told him “your boy's dead, you know”.

When he appeared to realise that Tucker had suggested that it was he who had more to do with Mr. Lee's death, Smith said: “That was the first time to show me that I was doing the wrong thing trying to protect him.

“I had everything to lose and nothing to gain by killing Sean Russells. I am innocent. I'm criminal minded but innocent of killing Sean Russells.”

Later, he said: “My mistake was allowing this to be delayed as long as it has. The person who is ultimately responsible for the murder of Sean Russells is Blair Tucker.

“I've allowed myself to become used as a pawn, but I'm innocent. I was not there (when Mr. Lee was killed) to see it happen… The evidence is going to prove that it could not have been me.”

Contrary to the story in Tuesday's edition of The Royal Gazette, at no time did Terranz Smith serve prison time in Fort Dix, New Jersey.