Left: Amy lying in state, Right: Child Killer Marlon King
I came across this story that happened in Trinidad and Tobago, where the man in the pic above, right, tortured, abused(raped) and beat to death four-year-old Amy Annamunthodo, his step daughter.
Even though the story happened a while ago, Judgement was only passed recently, so I figured there might be many like me who never heard of Amy's story prior to now, thus decided to share.
I'm still gobsmacked from the cruelty of this man...I mean, what could 4 year old Amy have done to deserve this kind of brutality?
Indeed, a lot of animals in human clothing walk the face of the earth.
The trial spanned five months, and heard from 16 State witness and two defence witnesses, but it took the jury only two hours to return with the verdict.
The State proved that on May 15, 2006, Marlon King tied Amy’s hair to a piece of cloth and strung her to a door frame at his Ste Madeleine Road, Marabella home. He then gagged the child with a knotted plastic bag, and punched her about her body with his clenched fists 20 to 30 times.
The witness to the beating was Andre Rocke, a neighbor and friend of King’s who testified for the State.
Rocke said he went over to King’s house. He watched an adult movie with King, but Amy was in bed, humming and playing with her fingers. Forensic pathologist Dr Hughvon Des Vignes, in his testimony, said Amy’s fingers resembled those of a washer woman. Anita had gone to San Fernando.
Rocke testified that King, a security guard who worked night shifts, asked him to leave the house at about 12.30 pm because he wanted to rest. Rocke went downstairs to finish smoking a cigarette, but testified that he felt the wooden house shaking and believing King had a woman in the house, walked back up the stairs. Peeping through a hole in the door, Rocke saw Amy hanging by a cloth tied to her hair.
Rocke testified that the child was wearing only a panty and her mouth was gagged with a plastic bag. Rocke told the jury of five men and seven women, that while King was cuffing Amy, he kept telling the child, “Hush your mouth...hush your mouth.” The child was swinging, Rocke said, whilst King was cuffing her.
Pathologist Dr Hughvon des Vignes found lacerations, tears, bleeding, scrapes and bruises on Amy’s brain, neck, eye, chest, shoulder, palm and back of her right hand, her heart, lungs, spleen, liver, adrenalin glands, kidney, abdomen, pelvic area, upper, mid, and lower back, and bottom. Amy reportedly died within 15 minutes of the beating.
In his defense, King testified that he and Anita(Amy's mum) took Amy to the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH), but when the girl was seen at about 9.30 pm that day, she was in complete rigor mortis (stiffening of the muscles and joints).
Estimated time of death was put at between six to 12 hours before Amy was taken to the hospital which coincided with Rocke’s evidence that he witnessed her being cuffed between midday and 2 pm. Hospital authorities notified the San Fernando Police Station and Sgt Sean Dhillpaul led a party of police officers to the hospital and following investigations, charged King with Amy’s murder.
King denied all of it, claiming that he had spent time that day with Amy. He said he found Amy during the day in a bedroom “humming and crying” before she defecated in her underwear and he made her clean up herself.
King said when the child’s mother came home, he had left to visit a neighbor and was called back by Anita Annamunthodo to find that Amy “was stretched out.”
He said he never once struck Amy. However, the State brought his ex-wife to testify that she had been beaten naked in the road by him, and that King had sex with her, while an infant was in their bedroom.
The court also learnt that King—a father of three children ages 13, 15, and 24—often allowed couples to have sex at his house.
After spending five days summing up the case, the jury gave its verdict and King was sentenced to death by hanging.
Really sad story.
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