Crystal Beharry risked her own safety so her son could be with his father, but on Thursday that choice proved fatal as her mutilated body was found in a balisier patch. Relatives said Beharry, 27, defied their calls to return to her parents’ Colenso Trace, Navet home, after threats to her life, even stealing hundreds of dollars worth of jewelry in an attempt to scare her off.
Distraught sister Julie Beharry said Beharry already had two children from a failed relationship and wanted her eight-year-old son Antonio Contrero to have a complete family. “We told her many times to leave, but she has a son with her husband so apparently she was trying to make a living for them,” Julie said. Julie said she spoke to her sister an hour before she went into her garden and both of them had made plans to visit a spiritual healer in Point Fortin later.
However, police said around 3 pm, Beharry, a gardener and a mason with URP, went into the garden obliquely opposite her Naparima/Mayaro Road, Agostini Village home to tend to her chadon beni field. When Antonio returned home from classes and could not find his mother, it was only then his father Ronald Contrero and other relatives became worried.
Numerous calls to her phone went unanswered and a thorough check of the garden failed to locate Beharry. Police believe her killer knocked her unconscious, took her into the forest where he removed her pants and chopped her about the neck and head. It was not until a search party including family members, hunters and police combed the area, that they found her bloodied corpse dumped some 300 feet into the forest, her hands stuck over her face as if she was still parraying the blows.
Since then, the man suspected of commiting the crime has gone missing and despite his relatives’ claim that he suffered a mental condition, Beharry’s brother Devin Sookhoo said the murder was planned. Sookhoo, one of the men who found the body, said, “They made it look like a rape scene, but I know it is not a rape scene. That man took off this girl’s pants, folded it, doubled it real neat and nice. That is a perverted mind.”
“If she had come back home, she would not be in this position right now.” Julie said although her attacker was not able to physically assault her in the past, there were heated arguments involving her stay at the house. Julie said her sister was always fearful for her life because she received threats regularly. “It was not the first time somebody tried to kill her. One time she and her son were home and they tried to chop down the door to go and chop up her and her son in the room.
“A few weeks ago they took all her jewelry from the house. I don’t know why, but that is just the environment they live in. She reported it and apparently the case is going on,” Julie said.