Deadly property dispute: Brothers paid $85,000 to kill pensioner

Brothers Orwin and Cleon Hinds were paid a total of $85,000, with the former only receiving $5000, to execute 72-year-old Clementine Fiedtkou-Parris, who was shot dead in front of her Robb Street, Georgetown home more than a decade ago, over a property dispute.
Last week, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) overturned the 50-year sentence that was imposed on each of the siblings by the Court of Appeal of Guyana and instead resentenced them to the maximum penalty for this category of murder (murder-for-hire) which is life imprisonment.
The pair becomes eligible for parole after 20 years, including time spent on remand.
Orwin, in a confession statement, the CCJ said in its written decision, described the plan that was hatched with his brother and two other men, “Dutchie” and “Blackboy” to kill the elderly woman, for money. According to the court, Orwin said that he obtained a gun and gave it to Cleon, who then lent it to “Blackboy”. Cleon, in a similar statement, confessed to being told about the payment to murder Fiedtkou-Parris, and his decision to lend the gun to the organisers to, “get in on the business”. He also said that he drove around the house after and collected money for the killing.
“He [Orwin] said that he and the other men went along with a driver to the deceased’s house and before the killing, he told the men that he wanted no part of it, but eventually was persuaded to go. He and ‘Dutchie’ entered the house where they passed a man on the stairs. He said that ‘Dutchie’ told him to restrain the man, which he did, and he then heard two shots. They left and heard the following day that Fiedtkou-Parris had died,” the regional court outlined.

In its decision, the CCJ noted that Orwin said that “Blackboy” gave him $80,000 and Cleon, $5000 to kill the elderly woman. The regional court noted that the convictions of the brothers were primarily based on their written and oral confessions, and additionally in relation to Orwin, on the evidence of an eyewitness who identified him in an identification parade.
The charge the men had faced detailed that, on the night of June 30, 2011, at Lot 42 Robb Street, Georgetown, they murdered Fiedtkou-Parris pursuant to an arrangement wherein money was intended to be passed from one person to another.
It was reported that three men had gone to the woman’s home asking for “Auntie”, and when she emerged from her bedroom, one of them pulled out a gun and shot her several times to her upper body. The men then fled the scene in a waiting motor car while the elderly woman was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, where she was pronounced dead. It is believed that a bitter dispute over a property might have been the motive for her killing.
Besides the two brothers, two other men, Roy Jacobs and Kevin October were also convicted of Fiedtkou-Parris’ murder. While October died in jail, Jacobs did not further appeal his conviction and sentence to the CCJ. The trial Judge had initially sentenced the quartet to 81 years’ imprisonment each, with parole eligibility not before 45 years for the crime. (G1)