Trinidad: Girlfriend of missing woman’s ex-lover leads cops to body

Security guard Chris Rivers
Security guard Chris Rivers

(Trinidad Express) A woman led police officers to the body of missing security guard Chris Rivers in Mayaro yesterday.

The body of Rivers, 24, was found in a forested area near the Mafeking Cremation Site. Police were told she had been strangled on July 8 — the day she went missing — and her body dumped in the bushes by her killer.

A police team of officers of the Eastern Homicide Division and Eastern Division Task Force led by ASP Sean Dhilpaul went to the crime scene.

The woman was brought to the scene in handcuffs by police officers in a heavily tinted unmarked vehicle.

GRUESOME DISCOVERY: Raymond Rivers shows where the body of his niece Chris Rivers, a security guard from Rio Claro, was found in this forested area in the village of Mafeking, Mayaro, yesterday. Rivers disappeared last Monday after leaving her place of work at a WASA substation in New Grant.

Together with officers of the Eastern Division Task Force, police searched the forested area in the location where they were told Rivers’ body was dumped.

The officers discovered the remains approximately 200 feet into the forested area clad in clothing similar to that worn by Rivers when she was last seen leaving the WASA substation at Naparima Mayaro Road, Rio Claro.

The body was in an advanced state of decomposition.

On Friday, police detained an ex-lover of Rivers, with whom police were told she had broken off an abusive relationship last year.

The woman, a girlfriend of the ex-lover, was brought into the police investigation over the weekend, police said.

She lives at Tableland and works at a bar in Mayaro.

When questioned by Homicide detectives she allegedly admitted to knowing what happened to Rivers. She allegedly told police officers that the ex-boyfriend strangled Rivers with his hands at his house at Oilfield Road, Union Village, Mayaro. The woman alleged that a plan was hatched to dispose of Rivers’ body.

She alleged that the man put Rivers’ body in his vehicle, and with her in the passenger seat, they drove into the road leading to the Mafeking Cremation Site.

She alleged that she remained in the vehicle as Rivers’ ex-boyfriend took the body out of the vehicle and walked into the forested area.

The woman claimed he returned to the vehicle a few minutes later and drove off.