Three men will spend their third Christmas on remand at Westgate next week after their Supreme Court murder trial was yesterday adjourned until the New Year.

The Bermudian men, Terranz (Monster) Smith, Blair Tucker and James (Spooks) Dill deny killing mysterious American Stanley Lee on July 28, 2001.

They have been on remand since their arrests in August, 2001 after Smith, in custody on an unrelated breaking and entering charge, alerted Police to the body of Mr. Lee and after balking while on the road on August 8, showed Police the following morning, sparking a major investigation.

The Crown allege that Mr. Lee, an ex-convict, was stabbed to death after relations soured between him and Tucker when it was discovered that cocaine they had imported was of a low quality and Mr. Lee was repeatedly stonewalled in his demands for the drug and any money made from it be returned.

By August 9, Mr. Lee's “skeletonised” body had decomposed to such an extent that the skin on his face was gone and his chest was reduced to just the rib cage.

He was found sprawled in a bush in an isolated part of the unkempt park. Some identification documents were found in a nearby rental cycle.

Insp. Beverley Pitt, the head of Western CID in 2001, testified last week that when she saw Mr. Lee's body on the morning of August 9, she could clearly see maggots moving about the body.

It was those maggots and the casings in which they metamorphosed into adult flies that Simon Fraser University professor Gail Anderson, a forensic entomologist, based her conclusions.

Dr. Anderson, who is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, said maggots and pupae of Cochliomyia macellania or the Secondary Screw worm fly - the “probably main index” found on the body - were collected on August 13 and sent to her on September 10.

The mean temperature in Bermuda between July 28 and August 9, 2001 - the dates provided to Dr. Anderson by Bermuda Police - was calculated to be 79.5 Farenheiht.

Using this information, Dr. Anderson estimated the time of death to be “at least 7.3 days and could be as much as 12.4 days before August 13” or on July 31/August 1, 2001.

She also calculated, and in one case estimated, the growth rate of at least two other species of fly, including a housefly and concluded the body had been dead at least nine days before August 13, because of the different “life cycles” of the other species.

“I would suggest death between 28 July and 1 August. The insects indicate the death of the victim in this case was prior to 5 to 6 August and didn't occur later,” Dr. Anderson said. “Death probably occurred on or after 28 July.”

She factored in knowledge about the habits of the flies, including the fact that C. macellania could appear minutes after death if there is blood, or 24 hours later without blood, and that two house fly species usually appear at a dead body five or six days later.

Also included in her estimate was the fact that Mr. Lee was found under some shade and that there had been minimal rain during that time.

Dr. Anderson explained that temperature influences the metabolic rate of growth of fly larvae - commonly called maggots - and that the amount and duration of rainfall at the time of death or shortly thereafter play a role in the start of egg laying.

Dr. Anderson said she was mainly interested in insects that were in the last of three larvae stages, saying: “The oldest specimens were there the longest.

“I'm not looking at the flies. They could have just flown in at the time of collection. The presence of maggots at the last stage and empty pupae indicate the completion or near completion of the life cycle - the length of which is entirely predictible.”

To Smith's lawyer Liz Christopher, she later said: “Empty pupae cases tell me that flies were intimately associated with that body and they went through their entire life cycle on that body.

“Yes, it is possible (that they were there up to a month before collection). However, we also have younger stages, which we would not see if they had gone through to the life cycle.

Asked about rain, Dr. Anderson said: “If it rained or death occured in the middle of the night, times when flies are not out flying, that will impact arrival (on the body of the egg laying female). That means that if it rained like it does in Vancouver for three or four months, that will affect it. And if it rained heavily for a couple of hours like yesterday (in Bermuda) that too would affect it.”

Dr. Anderson is understood to not have been happy with the collection of the insects, and said on the stand that she had written “protocols” for the Bermuda Police Service for collection of insects for forensic entomologists in the future.

She agreed during cross examination by Dill's lawyer Liz Christopher that Police “were not terribly experienced with the collection of insects” and that if she had conducted the collection, the ambient temperature at the scene would have been recorded.

Earlier, Insp. Pitt stood by her handling of the initial probe into the discovery of a dead body, telling defence lawyer Larry Scott she had a certain amount of discretion when arresting people for minor offences but tried to treat everyone equally, regardless of their offence.

During questioning that lasted throughout the morning session, Mr. Scott was interrupted by Crown counsel Juan Wolffe with objections to his line of questioning - almost all of which were sustained by Puisne Justice Norma Wade-Miller.

In her final address to the jury yesterday, Mrs. Justice Wade Miller said “it is in the interests of everyone” if witnesses did not have their testimony disrupted by the Christmas break. The jury was released and will return on Monday, January 5, 2004.