HE has the mental age of a primary school pupil and faced the death penalty if he was convicted of killing Joanne Clarke in the Caribbean, writes Paul Harris.

But if defence lawyers are to be believed, Tennel McIntosh would have been sacrificed to save something far more dear to the Bahamian authorities - the tourist trade.

The sun-kissed stretches of golden sand are no place for murder. Not when your economy depends on thousands of foreign visitors spending dollars, pounds and euros by the truckload for a taste of Paradise.

The police, the jury may understandably have inferred, did not want anyone to think there was a killer still on the loose during the peak season.

Joanne was murdered on a lonely path close to Cabbage Beach, a popular stretch of sand on Paradise Island, a haven of high-life gambling and holidaymaking just across a bridge from Nassau, the island's capital.

Tourism accounts for three-quarters of all revenue generated in the Bahamas, and Paradise Island has attracted such guests as the late Shah of Iran and US newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

To reassure tourists, the Bahamian government poured enormous resources into catching Joanne's killer. Detectives from the FBI and Scotland Yard joined the hunt and a reward of £125,000 was offered.

But the island's reputation was further dented when a senior Scotland Yard officer was robbed at gunpoint before the investigation had properly begun. Det Supt Brian Morris had gone to help Bahamian police investigate Joanne's murder and that of US tourist Lori Fogleman. Tennel McIntosh remains accused of killing the American and will be tried separately in that case.

As the evidence was gathered, a doctor took blood, hair and tissue samples from McIntosh and he was charged with the murders of the two women. A watch belonging to Joanne was found in McIntosh's pocket, though defence lawyers claimed it had been planted.

To most outsiders he appeared to be guilty. In her closing address, prosecution lawyer Cheryl Bethel said that a forensic expert testified that material found on Joanne's body appeared to match McIntosh's DNA to nearly 100 per cent. So the question today for Joanne's distraught family, who had flown to the Caribbean for the trial, is this: If McIntosh was framed, who killed her?

Joanne had flown to the Caribbean in 1998 to enjoy the holiday of a lifetime before starting a full-time job as a special needs teacher at Neithrop Junior School in Banbury. She had arrived in Nassau to stay with her friend Maggie Connelly, who was looking after the child of millionaire Greg Cole.

On August 21, 1998, the two women had spent the afternoon sunbathing on Cabbage Beach with Ms Connelly's ten-year-old charge, Brendan.

Ms Connelly decided to take Brendan home at about 3pm, and arranged to return at 5pm to pick up Joanne. When she returned, her friend was nowhere to be seen. The next day, searchers discovered her body in shrubland bordering the beach and a golf course. Police also found the body of teacher Ms Fogleman, 34, of Richmond, Virginia, who had disappeared a month earlier.

US pathologist Cyril Wecht, who performed the autopsy on Joanne, found that she had been hit over the head with a blunt object, burned on her thighs with what could have been a cigarette, and had injuries consistent with rape. Injuries on her neck pointed to the cause of death, he said.

The discovery of the bodies came a year to the day after another British woman, Carole Leach, was killed on the neighbouring island of Eleuthera.

At the trial, Joanne's mother Susan flew to the Bahamas to represent her daughter, to support her friends and to try to move towards an acceptance of her death. Shortly after the killing, she spoke of her daughter's passion for helping people. She said: "Jo's passion in life was helping people. Anyone who knew her couldn't have helped but love her. We were a very close family and I was so proud of her. She did more to help people in her 24 years than many people do in a lifetime."

Tennel McIntosh faced an automatic death sentence if he had been found guilty. At the time of the killings, McIntosh, described by his family and defence lawyer Godfrey Pinder as "slow" and "mentally retarded", was living in a Nassau slum with his mother, grandparents and 17 brothers, sisters and cousins.

McIntosh's grandmother Uris said: "Rape and murder? He wouldn't know what to do with a woman. He's just a boy. He panics if a dog is hurt." Few people outside his family believed he was innocent. The evidence appeared substantial and the police investigation seemed thorough and sound. There appeared to be no other suspects.

Now Joanne's family must fly home knowing there was either a gross miscarriage of justice or gross errors by police. There will be further recriminations and much bitterness.

It will be a flight they will not forget.

*Additional reporting: Andrew Ffrench and Paul Warner.

Paradise murder remains unsolved

Story date: Thursday 24 February

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