Kerran’s family want help from JA government

The family remain in anguish, waiting for word, and have threatened to bring pressure on Kingston’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hoping authorities will press Cayman police on the flagging murder probe.

Almost seven months after the disappearance of nurse’s assistant Kerran Baker, 25, from her Bodden Town home, her Kingston-based family remain distraught, frustrated by the pace of the investigation into the likely 30 July abduction, and are threatening to involve the Jamaican government.

“We have not been hearing anything from anybody,” father Wilmot Anthony told the Jamaica Observer yesterday. “We need the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get in touch with the Cayman government because the case seems like it is dying out.

“We need more support from the Jamaican government,” he told the newspaper. “She was a responsible, working Jamaican. She was no squatter there.”

Royal Cayman Islands Police Service last August launched an intensive land and sea search for the missing woman after friends and neighbours, fearing the worst, reported they had not seen her.

While the probe turned up her white Honda Civic, car keys and a set of papers in the vicinity of Pedro Castle, investigators found no indication of her whereabouts.

On 16 November, police arrested a 35-year-old man in the Admiral’s Landing area in connection with the incident, but released him on bail after questioning. No charges have been brought while inquiries continue.

The Observer reported yesterday that Mr Anthony issued a public plea for the Jamaican foreign affairs ministry to get in touch with its Cayman counterpart, after saying the family was being stonewalled by investigators probing her disappearance.

Cayman’s Jamaican Consulate said they had tried to help, but were limited. “We communicated with the RCIP and were told the investigation was still very active,” Vice Consul Elaine Harris said yesterday.

“We have forwarded the information that we have obtained from the news here, and sent it to both the Miami consulate and to Kingston, and Miami has been very interested in the updates. There has also been interest on the part of government,” she said, but expressed her own frustration.

“What more can be done, and what more can investigators do? It is all still to be answered. As a parent, my heart goes out to the family,” she said.

“We met the family and assisted them when they were here,” for almost two weeks in August, themselves leading a massive search of the Pedro St James area by a legion of volunteers, “and we all saw the desperation”.

“We were thrilled to hear the news when they arrested someone,” but were frustrated at his subsequent release, Ms Harris said.

Police say the case remains active.  ”One of the challenges, of course, is having sufficient evidence, and one of the concerns is if they will ever have enough and the family will ever be satisfied with the results,” Ms Harris said.

Mr Anthony has in the past, described his frustration and anger to iNews Cayman, saying his wife and other daughter Toney-Ann were struggling, hoping for closure.

“It’s a sad situation,” Iona “Patsy” Anthony, Ms Baker’s aunt, told iNews yesterday. She accompanied Mr Anthony, his daughter and wife Sandra to Cayman in August.

She said she did not know if Mr Anthony had yet contacted Kingston’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but said the Cayman Consulate had spoken to him yesterday, offering what help they could.

“I’m not feeling too good, though,” she said. ”I’m not hearing too much about it, and I fear the police are not very active. We are hearing nothing and seeing nothing, and I am just hoping and waiting now.”