Shocking testimony
almost 4 years in Jamaica Observer
More macabre details of the operations of the Klansman gang yesterday tumbled from the lips of the second gang member turned State witness in the ongoing trial of 33 people accused of being part of the criminal organisation at the Home Circuit Court, downtown Kingston.Witness number one, who has been testifying from a remote location since last Wednesday, brought the curtains down on yesterday's proceedings detailing a crude request from accused Joseph McDermott for the body of a man who had been killed to be dug up so he could get the skull to "drink blood" from.McDermott was yesterday identified by the witness as the individual responsible for guarding the back entry to the gang's Jones Avenue headquarters to ensure that no one from the rival faction would enter. McDermott, the witness said, would patrol at nights."Nobody was to enter, anybody he sees who he don't know, he shoot to kill," the witness claimed.The request for the skull of the dead man, he said, came after he had returned "from off the road" where he had gone to buy an AK47 and an M16. He said on meeting up with some of the men at the Shelter Rock community in the area, he saw McDermott telling another accused that he wanted the "skull of a man that they bury".According to the witness, he asked McDermott what he wanted the skull for, to which McDermott reportedly said he wanted to "drink blood from it".The witness also testified about the hijacking of a taxi, with the driver onboard, from Lauriston to carry out a shooting. When the driver challenged his captors by pulling a knife on them, he was shot in the head, the court was told.The witness further testified that on one occasion he stood guard while some gang members buried a man whom two of them had "stabbed up".In the early hours of the trial yesterday, the witness raised eyebrows with a stunning disclosure that Andre "Blackman" Bryan, the alleged leader of the criminal organisation, had showed him the gun used to kill former Jamaica Urban Transit Company Chairman Douglas Chambers "and said he put two big hole in his head".According to the witness, Bryan told him that Chambers had been killed because he was preventing the gang "from eating food".He claimed that Bryan told him that he gave the gun to an individual to sell because he didn't want the gun in St Catherine. He said the gun was to be sold in Clarendon or another parish.Chambers was shot dead by gunmen in Spanish Town, St Catherine, in June 2008. In December 2019, Tesha Miller, the accused leader of one faction of the Klansman gang, was convicted for orchestrating that killing.The witness further caused a ripple of murmurs across the courtroom when he disclosed that Bryan had death lists for the gang to eliminate.According to witness one, "Blackman have two lists with names." At one meeting held by the gang he said Bryan was complaining that "three man left pon one of di list and he need them to come off so he can move to the next list".As to how those names would be made to "come off" the witness claimed, "The only way them can come off is if dem dead."He told the court that other issues discussed at those meetings surrounded the collection of extortion monies at the Spanish Town bus park.The witness, who took the stand last Wednesday, also named 21 individuals, including himself, whom he said were the gang's top men.He further alleged that Bryan held "private meetings" with an inner circle consisting of four individuals who, he said, were the ones to carry out contract killings. According to the witness, he was not privy to the details of the contract killings.In another shocking allegation, the witness said Bryan gave him the duty of scouring the Internet to find crime statistics in the island. He said Bryan was irked to learn that the parishes of Montego Bay and Clarendon, at times, were recording more murders and shootings than Spanish Town."He would say Spanish Town is the head of the badness, so MoBay and Clarendon can't beat Spanish Town," he alleged. He claimed that Bryan said the gang needed to up its game in this respect as those parishes should not be beating Spanish Town. The witness further said the alleged leader assigned an individual to come up with a strategy to drive up the numbers for their home base.Last week the witness, in a similar account, had said the accused Stephanie Christie, the sole female on trial and a supposed top lieutenant of Bryan, was worried that after Bryan's arrest in 2018 he would have lost his grip on the St Catherine communities he controlled.Yesterday, he said Christie "was the aggressor in the group" and during meetings would be the most vocal berating them for not being as active on the ground as their rivals in collecting extortion monies.Also yesterday, in identifying another alleged member of the gang - the accused Carl Beech - the witness said members of the gang frequented meetings put on by the People's National Party (PNP)."Wi go a lot of PNP meetings together; wi go to Stadium (National Arena), wi go to the member of parliament office, Mandeville, Bog Walk, Portmore, a lot of places," the witness said.He said they would travel on the buses provided or their own vehicles."If we went to Stadium we would stay round by the bathroom where the almond tree is," he said.He further claimed that they "always carry gun to the meeting". The guns, he said, were carried by a female.The Crown, in opening its case on September 20, said the accused individuals who comprise the "Blackman faction" of the gang under Bryan's leadership had various roles in which they acted as "killers, drivers, lookout men or watchmen, gunsmiths and foot soldiers".