Morris, Huggins played key role
By CLINT HUGGINS
THE EVIDENCE of dead State witnesses Clint Huggins and murderer-turned-State witness Levi Morris in 1996 was what led to the hangings of Dole Chadee and, so far, five members of his gang. Morris received a pardon by then President Noor Hassanali and his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Justice Lionel Jones on the condition that he testify for the State. Huggins, who was also an accomplice to the murders, was murdered on Carnival Tuesday 1996 on the order of Chadee before he was able to give evidence. His deposition was read to the jury. Both men said Chadee provided the gang with guns, Marvin Gaye caps to use as masks, and gloves. Robin Gopaul shot Hamilton, Rookmin and Monica Baboolal each in the head. Either Stephen "Brain" Eversley or Bhagwandeen "Rambo" Singh shot Deo twice. Joel Ramsingh and Ramkalawan "Lolly" Singh were sent to meet Morris by Joey Ramiah. They met on Southern Main Road at 7.30 p.m. on January 10, 1994, just before the murders. Morris got into a rented white Sentra (PAY 1320) driven by Ramsingh. They then went to a house belonging to Ramiah's mother at Frederick Settlement, Caroni. Clive "Black Chinee" Thomas, Robin "Coop" Gopaul, Singh, Ramiah, Huggins and Eversley were already there. The men did not know what they were going to do at the time. They knew at the time that Chadee had sent for them. They got into a Sentra and a Bluebird station wagon and went to Valpark for gas. They then headed south to Piparo and met Chadee on the way. Chadee was driving a gold Hilux (TAY 5151) and was alone. They were instructed to go to the farm. Chadee indicated that he would arrange to get torchlights and other things. Chadee eventually arrived at the farm with one "Chico", and took a white crocus bag containing about six or seven guns, masks and gloves from his vehicle. The items were distributed among the men. Huggins was given a sledgehammer. "Chadee told us we have to break down a door at a house in Williamsville. He said we might only meet "Mice" (Hamilton Baboolal) and to kill him. And if by chance there is anyone else there, to kill them too. No one must be left alive to point him (Chadee) out because (Mervyn) Ghatt (a police officer) does do a thorough investigation," Morris had testified. Ramiah then asked Chadee what they should do if they met any children and Chadee told him: "Kill everybody." Chadee then warned the men not to leave any of the torchlights on the scene because he had given the same type to the police and they would know he was involved. The gang, minus Chadee left Piparo just after 1 a.m. in two cars. Singh and Sankeralli went to Reform in two other cars while the others went to Williamsville. At Williamsville, they saw Deo Baboolal and another man talking outside a grocery near the Baboolals' home. At that point they decided to leave the killings for another time because "the boss say all must die". They began to return to Piparo but turned around when they saw Baboolal returning to his house. Huggins broke down the front door and they pretended that they were the police. "We said, 'Police nobody move'," Morris, Ramiah, Gopaul and Ramsingh went into the house while the other men remained outside. They asked the occupants of the house who was Mice but the family denied that they knew "Mice". Gopaul then hit the man on his head with a gun and told him he was lying. The Baboolals began to beg for their lives. Morris asked Joey what they should do, and Joey said the boss said to kill everybody. Gopaul then shot one of the Baboolals in his head while Baboolal was kneeling then he (Gopaul) shot the others. The Baboolals two surviving children, then 12 and 13, were still in the bedroom. Morris continued: "I looked outside and saw someone begin to climb the step. I heard "'bow bow" and either "Brain" or "Rambo" shot him. He fell. I didn't see where he was shot." They men ran out of the house and Sankeralli and Singh at Reform in the other cars. Ramsingh ripped out the number plates from one of the cars. They were supposed to burn the cars but did not do so when they saw two vehicles pass nearby. The guns were collected by "Rambo".
DOLE CHADEE ordered the killing of the Baboolal family to send a message to the community at large: "Don't mess with me or your whole family is dead," English Queen's Counsel and chief prosecutor Timothy Cassel told the jury in the Dole Chadee murder trial in 1996. Cassel said then that another reason for killing the family was to prevent the police from questioning the surviving members and possible motives for killing Hamilton "Mice" Baboolal. The murders, he said, were nothing less than an example of what could happen if a gang leader was defied in some way. "It was plainly intended to terrorise the community. "Who could be behind such murders? Only a ruthless and vicious gangster of brutal inhumanity. Where did this family live? In the next-door village to Mr Dole Chadee. Do you believe Chadee-plainly a big shot-could fail to know who carried out such killings so close to his own domain, if he had not done them himself?" he asked the jury. Accused-turned-State witness Levi Morris and dead state witness Clint Huggins confirmed that Chadee ordered the killing, Cassel said, adding, "Who could have made up the words uttered by Joey Ramiah when he said 'kill everybody'?" He asked if the slaughter was ordered by someone other than Chadee, why would the police falsely blame the wrong man? Defence attorney Ronald Thwaites, he said, claimed that the police were seeking to use the murders to get Chadee because they thought he was a drug lord. But Cassel argued that "no drug offence in the world compares with this terrible massacre of nearly a whole family." The police conspiracy allegation against Chadee put forward by Thwaites, he said ,did not make sense. He added that having heard the speeches of the defence attorneys other than Thwaites, "we are still in ignorance of the defence of any of the other eight defendants." Thwaites' evidence of conspiracy came mainly from prisoners who claimed that they had spoken to Morris in jail, and the evidence of Neville Huggins, the father of Clint Huggins. Cassel admitted that the state's main witnesses (Morris and Clint Huggins) left much to be desired because they were two self-confessed murderers, but, he said, there was support for their evidence from honest witnesses. In putting forward the conspiracy theory, he said Thwaites had to make serious allegations against the police and prison officers. "He has used words like 'pathetic and crawling dogs' to describe them." But Cassel told the jury that if they rejected Thwaites imputation of a hidden agenda, it would be the end of Chadee's defence. Neither Clint Huggins nor Morris would have any motive to give police the wrong names rather than the correct ones, nor would they be able to put forward a lying story without police assistance, Cassel said. Both, he added, knew that any information they gave to the police would be checked out and if it was discovered that false allegations had been made, they would have been in trouble. "In the absence of a police conspiracy, apart from perhaps minimising their own part in the crime, accomplices have no motive to lie. They have every motive if they are putting themselves forward as a witness-hoping for an immunity or a reduction in sentence-to tell the truth." Thwaites, he said knew this and therefore had to add allegations of a police conspiracy to his suggestion that Morris and Clint Huggins were liars.
By DARRYL HEERALAL South Bureau AS THE MUSLIM midday call to prayer echoed through Piparo yesterday, an ominous cloud of gloom hung over the now infamous village known as Dole Chadee's backyard. The atmosphere in the quiet village was thick as the parched mud from the dormant mud volcano in the village. The tension was stark as Chadee's derelict mansion and abandoned temple. "How it hang is so it go swing," one old woman said. "Son, how you make your bed is so you will lie." Others, more in hope than belief, told the Express "they ain't hang the 'Boss'. He still alive. "Is only when I see him in the coffin I will believe he's dead." Piparo was a virtual ghost town yesterday, doors and windows locked with a few people milling around the place going about their business. "Things haven't change," one woman said from her perched position in her gallery. "It is the same way when he (most people not wanting to refer to Nankissoon Boodram aka Dole Chadee by his name) was here, when he get lock up and now he dead." Chadee, Joey Ramiah and Ramkalawan Singh were hanged yesterday morning at the State prison, Frederick Street, Port of Spain. Chadee was the first to be hanged at 6 a.m. followed by Ramiah, 7.23 a.m. and Singh 8.45 a.m. The trio, along with Robin Gopaul, Russell Sankerali, Bhagwandeen Singh, Clive Thomas and Joel Ramsingh, were sentenced to hang on September 1996. The nine men were found guilty of murdering Deo Babolal, 47, his wife Rookmin, 45 and their children Monica, 25 and Hamilton "Teddy Mice" gangster-style at their Williamsville home on January 11, 1994 around 3 a.m. Following the order to "kill them all" by Chadee two of Baboolal's children, Osmond, 13 at the time, and Hematee, then six, were spared. It was later learnt that Hamilton Baboolal was a cocaine pusher and paid the ultimate price for owing Chadee a large sum of money. At Williamsville yesterday Deo Baboolal's mother Beltina Mohammed was reluctant to offer her views on the State's putting Chadee and two members of his gang to death and would only offer an exasperated: "I am a sick woman. I have no comment to make." Since the killings, Hematee has gone to live with a relative while Osmond is living on his own. "Justice now served," one man in Williamsville puffed up his chest and said. The mood there a stark difference from Piparo. Everybody interviewed refused to give their names or have their pictures taken, almost as if they were afraid the "Boss" would come back from the grave and haunt them. "I glad they hang. They should have done that a long time ago and they should have hang all of them one time," one man ventured. One Piparo shopkeeper was not so anxious at the news of the triple hanging. "I am a law-abiding citizen and if the law say hang, then so it is. "But I can't understand why they must hang nine men and leave one State witness behind.
By ANTHONY MILNE JOEY RAMIAH, hanged at 7.23 a.m. yesterday at the state prison, was well known in the quiet Frederick Settlement where he lived, on the western side of the Southern Main Road. He lived in an almost palatial home on Arbuckle Street where his wife Carol was in bed, shattered by the news of her husband's death. Yesterday her sister Suzanne Ramcharran and relative Wayne Ali, were at the Ramiah home looking after her. "Right now she can't speak to nobody," Ali said. "She real sick and a doctor came earlier to see she." Ramcharran said she was sad and that Carol needed a lot of support. Innocent or guilty many people in the district were cut-up about his death. She said Carol had last seen Ramiah on Wednesday. Moonia Ramiah, Joey's mother, sat in her home with a black band around her head to ease the pain. Deeply depressed, she could hardly speak. With her were some of her nine daughters and four sons, grandchildren, relatives and friends. "I have nothing to say about it," she declared. "God would give us vengeance." Joey's sister, Sancharee Inaran, said angrily that it was hard to say if Joey was right or wrong, he was already gone. "If you do a crime you are supposed to pay for it, but you are also supposed to have a fair trial and Joey didn't have one." Asked what would become of the body, Sancharee said, "They must be done bury it already, is in the Government's hands and you can't see the body after a hanging. How they could hang nine people for one crime?" Pretty Soonita Ramiah, another of Joey's sisters, said she was sure the trial was unfair. "Joey started out working in a bakery, and they accused him of pushing a little drugs. Most people, including a woman who ran a parlour, summed up the general mood in Frederick Settlement, as sadness bound up with the belief that if you do the crime you do the time.
By CAMILLE BOODOO South Bureau Seven members of the Chadee family appeared before magistrate Mark Wellington in the Princes Town Court yesterday. Lloyd Chadee, Felix Legendre and Winsfield Chadee were arrested and charged by Cpl Flavinen of San Fernando CID on July 16, 1991 for the possession of marijuana. All three charged were granted bail in the sum of $15, 000. Henry Chadee , Winsfield Chadee and Rishi Chadee were arrested and charged by PC Jackman of Crime Suppression Unit on December 11, 1998 for the possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. They were each granted bail in the sum of $100,000 and are to reappear in court August 17. Henry Chadee, 64, along with his 52-year-old wife Dolly and their 26-year-old daughter Denise were arrested and charged by Cpl Nanan for the possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. They were granted bail in the sum of $100,000 each. They will reappear to answer charges against them on Thursday, June 17. The family were arrested and charged on May 7, at their home on Pascal Road, Princes Town. 
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