NASSAU- When 11-year-old Marco Archer failed to return to his Brougham Street home from a trip to the neighbourhood store in 2011, no one would have known the impact his kidnapping and murder would have on the way Bahamian police deal with cases involving missing children.
On November 29, the MARCO Alert, an emergency alert system for missing children named in his honor will finally go live enabling police to send mass cellphone notifications when children are reported missing.
But 27 years before Marco’s kidnapping and murder, 10-year-old Scottie Andrews met an equally tragic end after he didn’t make it home.
Around 10pm on October 3, 1994, Scottie and a 12-year-old friend came across 33-year-old Clayton Cox while walking home from a game room on Blue Hill Road.
According to the witness, Cox got off the Wesley Hall Church wall and grabbed them by the backs of their necks, as they continued through the shortcut to their shared yard.
Cox sent the witness home. However, Cox called the boy back and sent him for a rug.
The witness returned with a rug taken from a nearby wall.
Once again, Cox ordered the witness home. When he left, Cox was still holding Scottie by the back of his neck.
The witness said he saw Cox get a sheet of plywood, that measured about seven by three feet, from his home.
Cox took the plywood in the direction of an abandoned house in the communal yard and warned the child to stay away from the boundary wall.
Body found with pants pulled down
Four days later, an official of the seventh Day Adventist Church called the police after finding Scottie’s decomposing body between the back of the church and boundary wall.
His body was covered with a rug and plywood and his pants were pulled down.
A pathologist testified that Scottie died from a blow to the head.
A jury convicted Cox of murder on November 12, 1998 and the trial judge imposed the mandatory death penalty.
After a 2006 Privy Council decision declared the mandatory death sentence unconstitutional, Cox was resentenced to life imprisonment on March 30, 2010.
Cox appealed the sentence and the Court of Appeal handed down a 50-year sentence with effect from the date of conviction.
Perhaps if Scottie’s death had prompted authorities to handle missing children’s cases differently, Marco would still be alive.
