A tragedy and its aftermath
1996
July 2: Becky and her friend Jasmine Meens spend a night out in St. George’s. When their taxi fails to show the pair accept lifts on bikes from strangers. Jasmine makes it safely home but Becky goes missing after accepting a lift with two men.
July 3: Becky’s body is discovered at 3.30 a.m. at the roadside in Ferry Reach. She has been raped, sodomised and stabbed 16 times.
July 10:<> Police arrest 17-year-old Bermudian Justis Smith and 21-year-old Jamaican Kirk Mundy in connection with the killing. Two days later, Smith is charged with premeditated murder and Mundy charged with accessory after the fact.
October 16: Mundy is jailed for five years after pleading guilty to being an accessory to the crime. He admits to having sex with Becky but said he found Smith killing her when he returned from washing himself in the sea.
July: Mundy is jailed for 16 years for an armed robbery of a bank vehicle committed in November 1995. He had been on bail for this at the time Rebecca was killed.
1998
Jan: Mundy is charged with murder when new forensic evidence comes in.
March: The Court of Appeal throws out Chief Justice Austin Ward’s decision to allow Mundy to be charged with murder. The Crown contests this and continues to push for Smith and Mundy to be tried together.
July: The Privy Council in London throws out the bid to prosecute Mundy for murder.
November: Smith’s murder trial begins. The jury hears gruesome testimony. American forensics expert Dr. Michael Baden says many wounds inflicted on Becky were to force her into doing something she didn’t want to do. Judge Vincent Meerabux causes an outcry by ruling Smith has no case to answer.
2000
January: The Privy Council in London rejects a bid by prosecutors to re-try Smith for murder. It criticises Judge Meerabux for throwing out the case before it was put to the jury but says the acquittal cannot be overturned.
2003
August: Smith is found guilty of stabbing a woman in Dockyard the year before and sent to jail.
2006
March: Director of Public Prosecutions Vinette Graham-Allen tells the Middleton family fresh charges such as serious sexual assault, torture and kidnap cannot be pressed.
2007
Today: Cherie Booth QC will ask Chief Justice Richard Ground for this decision to be overturned and Mundy and Smith re-tried.
