An avid fan of Court TV’s popular show Forensic Files, nothing filled me with pride more than when Wednesday night’s show, which featured the perspicacity of our very own Bahamian forensics team.
It was their keen forensic insight which lead to the conviction of Domonic Moss and accomplice Keith Lotmore, for the 1999 rape and murder of Samantha Forbes.
After their 2005 trial, Moss was sentenced to 25 years for murder but the jury found that Lotmore was not a real participant in the crime but witnessed the murder and did nothing. He was sentenced to three years in prison for manslaughter.
It was on January 11, just one day after The Bahamas celebrated Majority Rule Day, when the episode titled “Moss, not Grass” aired on Forensic Files and featured interviews with Bahamian investigators, including Forensic Criminologist Assistant Superintendent of Police, Elburt Ferguson of The Royal Bahamas Police Force, prosecutor Albertha Bartlett of the Attorney General’s Office and Carlson Shurland, a Freeport Attorney and Freeport News Senior Reporter, Lededra Ferguson-Marche.
The show unveiled scenes from Freeport, which included the golf course on which Ms. Forbes’ body was found. It was also important to note that a rain storm on the night the murder occurred, which seemingly washed away any tangible forensic evidence at the crime scene.
The show continued with, interviews of locals, which first led investigators to Moss and Lotmore, who were reportedly the last ones seen leaving a restaurant with Forbes.
But when officers first interviewed the two men, they admitted to being with Forbes but said that they had dropped her off safely. The men even returned later to the restaurant to collect food that was left there by mistake.
The police still got a warrant to search Lotmore’s car but found no traces of blood or any other type of forensic evidence in the car. Further, they also checked out the clothes which Lotmore was wearing on the night of the murder and found no blood stains on them.
However, when they asked for Moss’ clothes, he told them that he did not know, or could not remember what he had been wearing on the night in question. The police had nothing to link the men to Forbes’ rape and murder and had to let them go.
In the Forensic Files interview with ASP Ferguson, he said that one of his investigators, in hindsight, remembered that there had been grass on Lotmore’s shoe, which looked similar to the grass from the golf course where Samantha’s body was found.
Hence, the Bahamian police forensic lab sent both samples of the grass to a Botanist in the USA, and the results thereof revealed that the blades of grass were so distinctive and was unlike any other type on the island. It was a type of Bermuda Grass.
It was this evidence, that led police right back to their first prime suspects. Confronted with the evidence, Lotmore told, interrogators that Moss had committed the crime and that when he tried to step in, Moss also threatened him with the knife. So he just stood on the side, as Moss raped Forbes and then stabbed her.
However, Moss’ story was different, as he blamed his friend Lotmore for the killing. Both men were still charged before the courts with Forbes’ murder. The forensic evidence cleared Lotmore of the committing the crime and also proved that his version of the story was true.
But the most damning evidence during the trial, the TV show revealed, came from Moss” own girlfriend. On the stand, she testified that on the night of the murder. Moss had come home “drunk,” wearing bloodied clothes and told her that ” a girl is dead.” The girlfriend also told the court how she washed his stained clothes.
Needless to say, Bahamians who watched Forensic Files on Wednesday night, were more than ecstatic to see the impressive level at which the local forensics team operated – so much so, that it gained the attention of Court TV, a network which is seen by millions globally. Court TV is the only cable network providing a continuing and critical look at the American justice system.
By VANESSA C ROLLE Guardian Lifestyles Editor
BahamasB2B Editor’s Note: Ms. Rolle correctly applauds the police work but fails to mention that the suspect’s conviction was later overturned by the dysfunctional courts of the Bahamas. Mr. Moss was “excused” for the murder of Samantha Forbes because he had been drinking. The judge, Chief Justice Sir Burton Hall, whose decisions have come under much criticism in the past, overturned Mr. Moss’ conviction, as he couldn’t be held responsible for the murder due to the fact that he was “intxoicated” at the time.
