Show Notes
In the early hours of 10 January 1994, masked men came to a house in Williamsville, near Piparo, in south Trinidad. By morning, Deo Baboolal, his wife Rookmin, their son Hamilton and their daughter Monica were dead. Their youngest son, Osmond, then thirteen, was hiding in a bedroom with his little sister.
This film follows the court record: the order the prosecution said came from Dole Chadee, the night watchman and the witness who talked, the Carnival Tuesday killing of Clint Huggins, the 1996 trial, the appeals that ended at the Privy Council, and the nine hangings of June 1999. Then it asks what the country did for the boy who survived.
Dole Chadee and eight men were convicted of the Piparo murders and hanged. He was reputed to be one of the Caribbean's top drug lords; he was never convicted of a drug offence. Statements attributed to the Trinidad Express are reported as the newspaper's account, not as findings of a court. Scenes are reconstructions made for this film with AI, not archival footage.
Sources Trinidad Express (Williamsville follow-up, accounts of Osmond and the Baboolal family); Trinidad and Tobago court reports on the trials of Dole Chadee and of Clint Huggins' killers; Amnesty International AMR 49/02/99, 49/05/99, 49/06/99; Irish Times, "Killers hanged in Trinidad as plea to London fails"; Tampa Bay Times, 5 June 1999; UN Human Rights Committee; Privy Council judgments.
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