Cops make arrest in murder featured in Compass Cold Case series

Nearly seven years after West Bay father-of-one Justin Dilly Manderson was killed, a man allegedly connected to his murder has been arrested by police.

Manderson’s killing was one of the first cases to be featured in the Compass Cold Case Files series, which was done in partnership with the RCIPS Serious Crime Review team between 2021 and this year.

Police, in a statement to the Cayman Compass on Friday, said officers arrested a 28-year-old-man from West Bay on Thursday in relation to Manderson’s 1 Oct. 2016 shooting.

The West Bay man was arrested on suspicion of accessory after the fact of murder.

“This matter has been open and active for the past 7 years and was featured in a cold case series on the Cayman Compass back in June 2021,” police said in the statement.

Police said the suspect “is believed to have misled the police throughout the course of the investigation, where then 24-year-old Justin Manderson was shot at the front of a shopping plaza located on West Bay Road”.

Manderson was transported to the Cayman Islands Hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries.

The suspect has since been bailed pending further investigations into the incident.

The RCIPS team, which was headed by then Detective Sergeant Peter Dean, was first established by Police Commissioner Derek Byrne with the specific aim of getting to the root of unsolved cases in the Cayman Islands.

The team has been poring over volumes of files not only in the Manderson murder, which was code-named Operation Iraq, but other unsolved cases in a bid to bring closure for relatives of those killed.

Detective Mike Lewis, the lead investigator in the Manderson case, recently reopened the 26-year-old cold case on Cayman Brac involving the death of mother-of-seven Eva Glee Ebanks, who was killed in a crash in 1997.

That case is codenamed Operation Lavender – and though the lines of inquiry cannot be fully revealed due to their sensitivity, police are investigating the possibility that the circumstances of Ebanks’s death may not be as they first seemed.

Manderson, 24, was gunned down on the sidewalk on West Bay Road near Seven Mile Shops on 1 Oct. 2016.

Information on the case, which was profiled in the Compass series, said Manderson was confronted by his would-be killer inside what was then called Nectar nightclub.

Dean, in a 2021 interview about the investigation, said Manderson was at the nightclub with friends and, at some stage during the night, he became afraid for his life.

“Not too long before he was shot, he was so concerned that he actually did phone 911 and complained that he had been threatened and he gave some information regarding the people who he was saying was threatening him. He subsequently left,” Dean said.

While walking along the entrance to Seven Mile Shops, Dean said, Manderson’s killer approached and shot him.

Manderson was known to police and had been charged with the January 2015 murder of Victor Oliver Yates in West Bay, but that case was dropped ahead of a planned trial.

However, Dean and his team insisted that while Manderson had been a “person of interest” for police, that does not mean his killing should be allowed to go unsolved.

The Compass series has also shone the spotlight on the 23 Jan. 2015 murder of 20-year-old David Ebanks who was shot and killed while waiting for his meal at a local restaurant, as well as the assassination of West Bay resident 18-year-old Preston Rivers, who was gunned down near his girlfriend’s home on 17 Sept. 2011.

Anyone with information on Justin Manderson’s murder or any of the Cold Cases featured by the Compass can call the Serious Crime Review Team confidential tip line at 649-2930.

The series also looked at the circumstances surrounding the murder of Jason Christian, who was just 18 when he was ambushed and killed in September 2011.

In their Friday statement, police said detectives “continue to encourage anyone with information in relation to this matter to call the Major Incident Room at 649-2930. Anonymous tips can be provided directly to the RCIPS via the police confidential tip line at 949-7777, or via the police website.

Tips can also be submitted anonymously via Cayman Crime Stoppers, which offers up to a $50,000 reward for tips which lead to an arrest and charges for gun-related crimes.