Suspect ‘confessed to murder’

(CNS): As the crown opened its case on Tuesday against Leonard Antonio Ebanks for the brutal murder of Frédéric Bise in February 2008, the prosecution claimed that the West Bay man confessed twice to killing the Swiss banker. Ebanks is the second man to be tried over Bise’s death after Chad Anglin, also from West Bay, was convicted of murder in April this year. The crown claims that Ebanks was part of the joint enterprise, with the evidence against him based heavily on two confessions he is alleged to have made to two separate and unrelated people on two separate occasions in the wake of what was a particularly violent killing.

As the crown’s leading counsel began presenting the prosecution’s allegations against Ebanks, Simon Russell Flint QC, on behalf of the director of public prosecutions, said that Anglin had introduced Bise to Ebanks the night before he was killed.Anglin and Ebanks are cousins, the court heard.

The lawyer said Anglin had met Bise at the jerk chicken stand next to Kelly’s Bar in Birch Tree Hill, where he and Ebanks lived at the time. Anglin was seen by witnesses leaving Kelly’s in the banker's car in the early hours of 8 February 2008 as the bar was closing and after both men were filmed chatting on CCTV. 

Bise’s badly beaten body was found five hours later in the back of his burned out car in front of the West Bay house where he was living. The prosecutor said he had been savagely attacked by his murderers and had died as a result of multiple head wounds inflicted by what the crown suspects was a brick or breeze block. Although found in the trunk of a car which was set ablaze, the body was not completely burned and a postmortem revealed that Bise, who was gay, had engaged in anal sexual activity before he was killed.  

A jury of eight women and four men will hear the case over the next three weeks, with Justice Charles Quin presiding. The crown’s opening statement is expected to continue tomorrow morning at 10am in Grand Court One.