Police still to crack unsolved, high-profile crime cases

– including murders of Monica Reece, Trevor Rose, and Sheema Mangar

The Guyana Police Force’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is working assiduously on several unsolved crimes and cold cases, including the high-profile murders of Monica Reece, Trevor Rose, and Sheema Mangar.
Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum said the CID was still working on several cold cases, but owing to the shortage of resources, attention was placed on ‘easier to crack’ cases.
Nevertheless, the Crime Chief stressed that the matters involving Reece, Rose, and Mangar were still open, but declined to comment on the progress on these cases.

“We have three cases that we are working on presently. We would have re-opened those cases [and] interviewed witnesses, but we have other matters that we have been dealing with,” he said in an interview with this media house.
“At this point in time, we cannot divulge any further information on those cases. I won’t even comment about progress… if I go to the information, it might compromise the investigation,” the Crime Chief further pointed out.
On Good Friday back in April 1993, the body of Monica Reece was thrown out of a speeding vehicle on Main Street, Georgetown. A suspect was detained and interrogated by ranks shortly afterwards, but was later released because of the lack of evidence. The suspect’s vehicle, a 4×4 – which was described by witnesses as being the vehicle Reece’s body was dumped from – was also returned to him.
The Monica Reece case remains unsolved, and suspects continue to be released.
The case is among the three unsolved high-profile killings that were re-opened in July last year, some two months after the Police cracked the six-year-old murder case of Babita Sarjou and subsequently charged her husband.
The other two cases are the murders of popular local designer Trevor Rose, who was shot dead in January 2014 when a lone gunman riddled the taxi he was in; and then Demerara Bank employee Sheema Mangar, who was killed during the course of a robbery back in September 2010. She was waiting for a minibus to head home when a male snatched her cellphone and ran into a waiting motor car. In an attempt to retrieve her phone, Mangar reportedly ran in front of the vehicle and was run down.
Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud had disclosed, during an interview with this newspaper in 2015, that the Force would be establishing a Cold Cases Unit to investigate high-profile murder cases, which remained largely unprosecuted or unsolved. To date, there has been no news on the establishment of the unit.