NASSAU, Bahamas – A teenager was charged Friday with the murder of a Canadian tourist who was found with multiple chop wounds in a shallow grave on the Bahamian island of Abaco.
Marcia Rose McKenzie ﾗ a 35-year-old lab technician from of North York, Ontario ﾗ was found Monday a few feet off the island's main road, said Reginald Ferguson, assistant commissioner of police.
The 17-year-old, who was not named because of his age, appeared before a juvenile panel in Abaco's Magistrate's Court Friday and was ordered held without bail pending a preliminary hearing Oct. 17. It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors would try the teenager as an adult.
Police arrested the teenager Wednesday after several islanders reported seeing him with McKenzie on Saturday ﾗ the day she disappeared. When officers went to the teenager's home, they found a cutlass.
"We have identified it as the murder weapon," Fergsuon said. "There are no other suspects."
McKenzie's body was found with what police described as multiple chop wounds around her head, face, neck and arms. Police said her hands were partially severed and there was evidence she was sexually assaulted. She was partially clothed but was still wearing her watch and jewelry.
Because of problems identifying the body, police were awaiting dental records to confirm the victim as McKenzie.
McKenzie arrived Aug. 16 on the northern Bahamian island, just off the coast of Florida, to attend a weekend wedding and to visit her Bahamian boyfriend. It was her fourth trip to the Caribbean island.
That Friday night, she and her boyfriend reportedly had an argument at a night club and she left alone, police said.
She was last seen Saturday morning walking in Sandy Point, Abaco, police commissioner Paul Farquharson said.
Her parents in Toronto alerted police when she did not return on her scheduled flight Sunday. Her boyfriend also reported her missing after he went to look for her Saturday morning.
McKenzie's body was flown to the Bahamian capital, Nassau, where an autopsy was being performed.
Two of McKenzie's brothers flew to Nassau earlier this week.
In June, a Bahamian man was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the slaying of vacationing American schoolteacher Lori Fogleman.
Fogleman, 32, from Richmond, Virginia, disappeared in July 1998. Her decomposed body was found on a Paradise Island beach that August. On the same day, the body of a 24-year-old British tourist, Joanne Clarke, was found on the same beach. Police said Clarke was strangled and raped.
In February 2000, a jury acquitted Tennel McIntosh in Clarke's death, despite what prosecutors said was a videotaped confession and DNA evidence showing semen on her clothes that matched McIntosh.
McIntosh's first trial in the Fogleman killing ended in March 2001 with a hung jury. In the second trial, which began April 29, prosecutors were allowed to present evidence in the Clarke case.
