A former Bermuda police commissioner wants a “new cold-case team” on the island to review the murder of a Belleville teenager in that country thirteen years ago.
Seventeen year old Rebecca Middleton was found dying in a remote area on July third, 1996. She had been brutally raped and stabbed. Former police commissioner Colin Coxall says the specialist cold-case team and new national DNA data base could bring new evidence to light. Two men were arrested, Kirk Mundy allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge, and the case against Justis Smith was thrown out of court. British lawyer and wife of then-Prime Minister Blair, Cherie Blair, appeared before a judicial review in 2007 calling for a new trial. Bermuda maintains there can be no retrial because of “double jeopardy” laws. Coxall says England has abandoned those laws and Bermuda could get around them.
