A former cellmate yesterday testified that Bibi Sharima-Gopaul had confided that it was her lover and now co-accused, Jarvis Small, who murdered her daughter Neesa Gopaul by bashing her head in with a piece of wood.
The witness also said Sharima-Gopaul implicated herself and Small in the death of her husband by poisoning.
“Neesa deserved to get justice and no matter what, Neesa didn’t deserve to die by the hands of someone she trusted; someone that was supposed to protect her,” Simone Diane De Nobrega testified yesterday, when the trial of Sharima-Gopaul and Small, called ‘Barry,’ continued in the High Court.
They are accused of killing the 16-year-old between September 24, 2010, and October 2, 2010, at Madewini, Linden-Soesdyke Highway. The teen’s body had been stuffed into a suitcase, which was anchored in a creek at the Emerald Tower Resort with several dumbbells.
De Nobrega surrendered to police yesterday before taking the witness stand as she had been previously convicted in a lower court in her absence. And after spending most of the day testifying, she was taken into custody at the end of the hearing yesterday.
She told Justice Navindra Singh and the 12-member jury that she met Sharima-Gopaul on October 5, 2010 at the East La Penitence Police Station’s lock-ups, where they bonded over a five-day period. Describing her cellmate as pleasant and easy to talk to, De Nobrega said they became friends and would share each other’s meals and talk.
‘It wasn’t me; Barry
killed Neesa’
The court heard from De Nobrega that one night after having dinner and chatting, they went to bed. The witness said Sharima-Gopaul was beside her and about an hour later seemed to have been having a bad dream.
According to De Nobrega, Sharima-Gopaul began saying, “No Barry! Barry stop!” She said she woke the woman because she seemed to have been having a nightmare. She said when woman got up, she observed her constantly looking over her shoulders as if something was about to happen.
De Nobrega added that Sharima-Gopaul then asked her if someone had died a year earlier of poisoning and someone wanted to exhume the body to perform an autopsy, if it would be found out that the person had died of poisoning.
According to De Nobrega, she told her cellmate she had no idea and Sharima-Gopaul in-turn said she did not want to find out either.
Sharima-Gopaul, she added, then told her that she wanted some money to “dig-up the grave of her dead husband to in order to burn what was left in the grave and she wanted this done “soon, at any cost.”
In a silent courtroom of attentive listeners, De Nobrega said she was confused but Sharima-Gopaul told her, “After I tell you something, then you will understand why I have to do this.
The witness said that it was at that point that her cellmate softly held her hand and said, “It wasn’t me; Barry killed Neesa.”
The witness related to the court that Sharima-Gopaul told her that after Neesa’s father died, the teen became very “rude and disrespectful” to her and skipped school and stayed out late. In addition, whenever she would scold her, she would become upset, De Nobrega recounted.
De Nobrega said Sharima-Gopaul went on to tell her that she had met Small, who was a gym instructor, in March, 2010, when she began going to his gym because she was overweight and wanted to lose weight.
According to the witness, her cellmate told her she and Small began a relationship and related also that she wasn’t comfortable in her troubled marriage and as a result moved out of her home for two weeks and she and the man rented an apartment.
De Nobrega said Sharima-Gopaul told her she wanted to be with Small because he made her happy. She said the woman told her that she later moved back home because of her daughters but her marriage only got worse.
‘Out of the picture’
According to De Nobrega, Sharima-Gopaul claimed Small told her that the only way they could be together was if “Javed (her husband), was out of the picture.” De Nobrega said Sharima-Gopaul also told her that Small gave her some rat tablets and instructed her how to administer the poison.
She said her cellmate related that she had been advised that she could put small amounts of the poison in her husband’s food so that he would die “slowly” and no one would suspect that he was poisoned.
De Nobrega said the woman claimed Small would call occasionally to check-up on Javed’s condition and he would get angry and tell her that she wasn’t administering enough of the poison and accuse her of not wanting the man to die.
Tears occasionally rolled down Sharima-Gopaul’s cheek as her former cellmate testified. The accused at times looked at the witness and smiled also, while her co-accused sat calmly beside her with a kerchief over his mouth as the court listened to the witness’ testimony.
According to De Nobrega, Sharima-Gopaul said Small had given her some poison in a powder form, which she started putting in Javed’s meals. She said the woman told her that her husband began complaining about the taste of the food but she told him it was the side-effect of the medications he was using.
According to De Nobrega, the woman told her that as her husband’s condition worsened, she took him to the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, where a number of tests were conducted but he was sent home after nothing was found to be wrong with him except for problems he was having with his kidneys.
De Nobrega said the accused told her that after they returned home, her husband called Neesa and his younger daughter, Merriam, whom she also referred to as ‘Mary,’ and he also requested the presence of a friend of his. The court heard from the witness that the accused told her that once everyone had assembled, her husband told his daughters that he “wasn’t going to make it” and he wanted his friend to marry Sharima-Gopaul after he died to assist her in raising the girls.
The witness said that her cellmate told her that she went to check on Javed about 3am the following day and discovered that he wasn’t breathing, and appeared to have been dead. Afterward, she said Sharima-Gopaul claimed she immediately contacted Small, who went over to her house to check on Javed to ensure he was really dead.
De Nobrega said the accused told her that Small left her house shortly after and she began raising an alarm by screaming. She said Javed was buried the same day and Small moved into her house about two weeks later, much to the disproval of her parents.
The witness said her cellmate told her that she felt lonely and sad before Small moved in with her and he seemed to be getting along with the girls fine. However, she said she was told that Neesa began “acting-out” again towards her mother and Small later claimed that the girl wanted what her mother had—him.
According to the witness, Sharima-Gopaul told her that upon Small’s advice, she lay in bed and pretended to be sleep after the man told her that he was going to prove to her that her daughter wanted him. In the account purportedly given to De Nobrega, the teen then went into the room, appearing dazed as if she were drugged, and began dancing and undressing herself, but Small did not touch the young girl as she had gotten him to promise her that he would not touch her.
‘Trouble for them’
De Nobrega said the accused also claimed that Small told her Neesa had overheard her mother having a conversation on the phone relating how she had poisoned her father.
According to De Nobrega, Sharima-Gopaul told her that her daughter later went to the police station to report what she had heard but she later got the teen to tell the police that it was a lie.
The witness said the accused told her that on an occasion when she had cause to scold Neesa, the girl became angry and told her that she knew she had poisoned her father and Small subsequently told her that the situation was getting out of hand and they should get rid of her because she would cause trouble for both of them.
De Nobrega said her cellmate confided in her that Small suggested that they sell Neesa to some of his friends in Venezuela for $2M but that option was later ruled out since they thought that Neesa would probably return when she turned 18 and would cause “trouble for them.”
The witness further told the court that the accused also considered taking Neesa somewhere along the Linden-Soesdyke Highway where wood is burnt to make coal and pushing her in and making it appear like an accident.
According to De Nobrega, Sharima-Gopaul told her she did not like this idea since a part of her felt that the man and Neesa would push her over instead. As a result, this option was ruled out also.
The court heard from the witness that Sharima-Gopaul told her that one night she and Small had gotten into a physical altercation after she saw him and Neesa in a compromising position and he sustained a cut to his hand with a knife she had pulled.
Neesa, she reportedly said, had gotten between the two and was also cut in the process but later ran out of the house, after which Small followed and took her to a hotel in Parika to ensure that she was safe for the rest of the night.
The court further heard from the witness that the accused told her that the next day she and Barry got into an argument over a cellphone, during which he hit her in the head with it and that Neesa smiled as if she was happy when she saw them fighting.
De Nobrega said the woman told her that Barry told her that Neesa was causing too much trouble and that she needed to “join her father,” but whenever they planned something there was never any back-up plan.
‘Don’t kill me’
According to De Nobrega, Sharima-Gopaul said a few days later she took the girls to Royal Castle to buy chicken and then to the seawalls and on the way they stopped and picked up Small. She said that according to what the accused told her, Neesa was seated in the front passenger seat beside her mother, who was driving, while Mary sat in the back with Small, who sat directly behind Neesa.
The witness then told the court that Sharima-Gopaul told her she asked the girls if they wanted to go for a long drive and after they said yes, she drove them up to the highway. She said the accused added that it was while they were in the vicinity of Splashmins that Small placed a rope around the neck of Neesa, who began crying, “mummy, mummy, don’t kill me.”
De Nobrega said the woman told her that her daughter began kicking the dashboard of the vehicle and the steering wheel, while she turned into the trail leading to Emerald Tower. It was a trail she reportedly knew because it was Neesa’s favourite place to relax.
Mary, the witness said she was told, was sleeping at the time.
According to De Nobrega, she was told that they drove on the trail for about a mile before arriving at the resort, where Small exited the vehicle and removed Neesa, who was panting for breath. Sharima-Gopaul, the witness said, claimed she stood outside the car to ensure no one was around and she turned up the music so as not to wake Mary.
De Nobrega said Sharima-Gopaul told her that Small took her daughter, who had fallen to her knees on the ground, around to the back of the car and began hitting her to the back of her head with a piece of wood even as the girl stretched out her hand and cried “Mary, Mary, wake up.”
She said the woman told her Small had related to her that while he held the rope around Neesa’s neck, Mary opened her eyes and looked at him and that if she hadn’t gone back to sleep, they would had to have “gotten rid of her too.”
The court heard from the witness that the accused also told her that the last sounds she heard from her daughter were moans as Small continued to hit her with the wood as she lay on the ground before they placed her body into the trunk and drove back home to Leonora.
‘Run away’
De Nobrega said the accused told her that when she got home, Small’s wife, Marcy, was standing at her gate. The woman reportedly told Sharima-Gopaul to leave her husband alone, or else she would give the police tapes Small had recorded of them discussing the poisoning of her late husband.
The witness said the accused told her she told Marcy she would leave her husband alone, in order to get the woman to leave.
The court then heard from the witness that Sharima-Gopaul told her that around 5am the next day she went down to the vehicle and opened the trunk and to ensure that Neesa was really dead, she poked the body with a stick because she did not want to use her hands.
De Nobrega said the woman then told her that she took Merriam to her grandparent’s home and later reported Neesa missing. She said the woman also claimed Small assisted her in wrapping the body in a sheet and that they placed her passport and bankcard in the suitcase before driving back to Emerald Tower resort, where they used rope the wrap the suitcase and dumbbells to hold it down in the water.
The witness said her cellmate told her that Small said that it would look like Neesa had run away from home once they placed her passport and bankcard with the body. She said Sharima-Gopaul also said he told her that after thoroughly cleaning out her car, which she did, to also buy two pounds of fresh meat and lock the dogs in the trunk with the meat for an entire day so that the police would not suspect anything if they were to check the vehicle.
Asked by State Counsel Diana Kaulesar why she decided to tell this story after she had promised Sharima-Gopaul that she would not tell, De Nobrega in a teary voice said that as a mother with two sons, she would not have been able to live with herself knowing that she had such a weight to carry by keeping such a secret.
The trial continues the morning at 9 when De Nobrega will continue to be cross-examined by Sharima-Gopaul’s attorney, George Thomas.
Small is represented by a team of four lawyers, Lyndon Amsterdam, Glenn Hanoman, Bernard De Santos SC, and Zanna Frank, who declined to cross-examine De Nobrega.
