Grandfather guilty of disposing of granddaughter’s body

An 80-year-old Bush Hall man was found guilty of unlawfully disposing of the body of his 12-year-old granddaughter, Rasheeda Bascombe, sometime between 2002 and 2013.

Winfield Nurse was unanimously convicted by a nine-member jury in the No. 4A Supreme Court on Tuesday after deliberating for just over an hour and a half.

Nurse told police officers that three months after Bascombe did not return home, she had contacted him saying she wanted $1 000, the court heard. In a written statement, Nurse said he met her in Jackson, they went through a track and he gave her $300, but she said it was not enough, pulled out a knife, and they began to scuffle, during which they both fell to the ground.

“All of a sudden, she stop struggling, and when I look I see the knife sticking in she belly,” the statement read, adding that he left there, walked home, and returned two days later.

“I went back up in Jackson de same place that I met Rasheeda at the Sunday and she did still de place which part I left she with the knife in she. I did not want nobody to find she, so I roll she over and over till she went over a little cliff.”

In testimony recorded on June 1, 2013, Bascombe’s mother, Hermena Straker, who has since died, told police that while at Glebe Police Station, her father told her that Rasheeda had died. When she questioned him further, he said: “Rasheeda had asked him for money and she took out a knife pointing at him and the two of them started to scuffle, which caused them to tumble to the ground and Rasheeda get juck with the knife in her belly and she hit her head. My father also told me that he left her body there in Jackson, St Michael.”

She said no officers were in the room with them at that time.

Nurse opted to remain silent when the options for giving his defence were read to him and called no witnesses. Attorney Lennox Miller, who represented the now convicted man, requested a pre-sentence report, and Justice Donna Babb-Agard adjourned the sentencing phase until January 29, 2026.

Principal State Counsel Olivia Davis, along with State Counsel Tito Holder, prosecuted the case.