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61-year-old British Nurse Battered to Death in Caribbean’s, Her Young Lover a Suspect

by Gopalan on Mar 25 2008 1:24 PM

The unusual romance of a retired British nurse, vacationing in Jamaica, has ended in her murder. Her young lover is the key suspect, police say.

61-year-old Barbara Scott-Jones was having an affair with Omar Reid, a lowly labourer, who was only 30. She was trying to get out of the relationship, incurring the young man’s wrath.

And then her body was recovered from a concrete-sealed sewage pit behind her holiday home on the Caribbean island.

Reid, 6ft 4in., was engaged in renovating her home in Somerton in the northwest of Jamaica. He is thought to have fled Jamaica before the brutally battered body was discovered.

Barbara Scott-Jones, a divorced mother of three, had been stripped to her underwear and had suffered injuries including a fractured skull.

Her family flew to Jamaica after becoming concerned at not hearing from her for more than ten days.

They insist Reid was not her lover and was simply helping with building work at the home she had owned for 15 years. They said there was "no evidence" they were "intimately linked."

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But District Constable Rosemary Armstrong said: "They were often seen out together and it was known they were involved. Our information is that Mrs Scott-Jones had ended or was trying to end the relationship."

Superintendent Steve McGregor, who is leading the inquiry, has said there was an "established relationship" between Reid and Barbara Scott-Jones. Police said Reid disappeared soon after she failed to make contact with her family in Britain, Daily Mail reports..

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She had been due to return home toLeeds in May. Her sister had been killed in a car crash last year and Scott-Jones had decided to sell the Jamaican house they co- owned because it was full of memories.

Her daughter Salina Yildiz-Jones said: "She told me she was going to try to get an earlier flight back because she was feeling there was some hostility towards her. She had a nice car and she said a lot of people asked her for money - which she wouldn't give."

They spoke on March 11, when the mother "sounded a bit poorly." Yildiz-Jones became concerned when she heard no more and called with no response. Then, when she rang the house phone, a man answered and told her that her mother had gone away. "She would never go away without telling me," she said.

"The man who answered was Omar Reid. Mum used to give him money on a regular basis. She said she was going to stop doing this and did so about two weeks before her death."

She flew to Jamaica a week ago with her father Charlie Jones. Both were present when Barbara’s body was found after a tip-off to police.

Source-Medindia
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