Jamaica Crime News, St Ann: A St Ann man who was charged, along with another man, in connection with the murder of 72-year-old American national, Nancy Hardy, was granted bail when he appeared in the Hanover Parish Court in Lucea, Hanover, on Tuesday morning, March 26.
The accused 32-year-old Cedric “Smurf” Johnson, of Alexandria in St. Ann, was granted bail in the sum of $300,000, with one or two sureties, and he is to report to the Alexandria Police Station, twice per week.
Johnson who was facing charges of, Accessory to murder, was represented by Attorney-at-law, Earnest Smith.
His co-accused, 33-year-old Kemar Grant, otherwise called “Rasta” of Fish River district in Logwood, Orange Bay, Hanover and Sandy Bay, in Clarendon, who is facing murder charges, had no legal representation and he was remanded into custody.
Both men were ordered to return to court on April 26.
Johnson and Grant were arrested by the St Ann police on March 12, after Johnson was said to be caught in possession of a grey 2004 Honda CRV, which is owned by the deceased American woman Nancy Hardy.
Hardy who is from Amherst, Massachusetts, in the United States of America, went missing from a house where she was staying at Phase-3, Whitehall, Negril, on Saturday, November 24.
Reports by the Negril police are that about 10:00 a.m., one of Hardy’s friends went to visit her and discovered that she was missing.
He immediately made a report to the police and a search was launched to locate the missing woman.
The police learnt that Hardy was last seen in the company of Kemar Grant, with whom she shares a common-law relationship, so the lawmen carried out an operation at a house in Fish River, Logwood, Hanover, where Grant was living at the time. During a search of the premises, the police discovered a shallow grave on the premises.
The grave was uprooted and the decomposing body of missing American woman was found. The body was discovered wrapped in a green towel with her feet and hands bound, and her mouth stuffed with a rag.
Grant fled the parish and had since been hiding out in St. Ann and Clarendon, up to the time of his capture earlier this month.
