Ep 2: Murder or Suicide?

In this episode of Stuck, we revisit one of Jamaica’s most devastating wrongful convictions. From biased police tactics to flawed forensic evidence, we unpack how the justice system failed—and what it cost one man, his family, and the country.

On Friday, the 5th of September 2003, a single gunshot wound ended the life of Aldonna Harris Vasquez. Immediately, all suspicion, claiming murder, fell on the only person who was in the room with her that day: Police Officer Lescene Edwards.

The police started with suspicion, and the prosecution settled on a story that was salacious and simple: a police officer who killed the mother of his children and staged it to look like a suicide. The motive? Jealousy. The method? Deception. They claimed he forged a suicide note. There was no gunshot residue on her hand, so ‘she couldn’t have fired the gun’.

From that day in 2003, Lescene Edwards never wavered in his account of what happened in that room—it would take more than 19 years, the intervention of Jamaica’s Court of Appeal, and ultimately the UK Privy Council, before the system admitted what really happened: this was not murder.