Murder Trial of Jared Ranguy Languishes in High Court
The family of Karen and Teena Skeen, as well as Robert Vellos Senior is demanding justice, ten years after their loved ones were brutally murdered, allegedly at the hands of a son. Jared Ranguy is believed to be the person who viciously dispatched his mother, sister and stepfather inside their home in Ladyville back in November 2012. Since then the criminal case against him has languished in the court, amid changes to his legal team, as well as the judges presiding over the matter. Tonight, News Five’s Isani Cayetano revisits that story and hears from the Skeen family.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
In a society where the wheels of justice often grind slow, the families of murder victims can feel that they are powerless and that the system is working against them. In the early hours of November twenty-fifth, 2012, the unthinkable happened in Ladyville. Three persons, including Robert Vellos Sr., his wife Karen Skeen, and her daughter, Teena Skeen, had been slaughtered inside their family home on Marage Road.
Germaine Daly
Germaine Daly, First Responder (File: November 26th, 2012)
“When I run straight down the street, it was a lot of screaming and bawling, you know. I went straight in and I saw my homeboy, my friend Jared, you know, he was bleeding from his forehead, sitting down, you know, in front of his house just trembling, shaking. I asked him what happened, you know, he told me it was a home invasion, you know, he was so frightened.”
Jared Ranguy
Arrested in the wake of the shocking triple homicide was twenty-five-year-old Jared Ranguy. He is the son of Karen Skeen, he is also the younger sibling of Teena Skeen. Ranguy was subsequently charged with three counts of murder and placed on pretrial detention. That was over ten years ago. Since then, there has been a number of developments in the case against him.
Rene Skeen
Rene Skeen, Sibling of Deceased
“This November twenty-fifth makes it eleven years and after [having] been through seventeen court appearances, seven attorneys, two judges, we’re still at the same spot as of eleven years ago. However, the last case we attended about three months or so ago, my nephew, Jared, who is on remand requested a new attorney, who was then Godfrey Smith. He offered to do the case.”
Of note is that Senior Counsel Godfrey Smith, as well as his legal team at Marine Parade Chambers, has represented Ranguy in this very same matter previously. We also understand that this time he has offered to do so at no charge. Nonetheless, the case against Ranguy has meandered through the legal system for over a decade. It brings into sharp focus the maxim that if justice is not served in a timely manner, it is as if no justice is served.
Rene Skeen
“He requested three months to prepare for the case, the case was supposed to start, I think June twenty-eighth. We went to court and he requested three more months. So now the case is set to start on] October tenth. At this point, the way the family feels is that “justice delayed, justice denied”. It’s not about just us, the family, the surviving family but the three victims. It becomes a point where we feel like Jared, who allegedly committed these murders, is manipulating the system and it’s working on his behalf.”
At the end of March, Ranguy, now thirty-six, fired attorney Orson “OJ’ Elrington from his case. He was subsequently assigned attorney Leslie Hamilton, who informed the court that he was unable to take on the matter because he was a neighbor, as well as a good friend of the family. That’s when Ranguy reverted to Marine Parade Chambers for legal counsel. The turn of events, however, ended with Justice Ricardo O’Neil Sandcroft recusing himself from the case.
Rene Skeen
“Justice for, like I said, my sister Karen, my niece Teena and my brother-in-law Robert. Justice for them, that’s the most important thing at this point. However, what I want to see, or what we want to see, we want to see him found guilty and spend the rest of his life in jail, that’s what we want to see.”
At the time, Germaine Daly, a next door neighbor who responded to the scene of the gruesome murders, told News Five that Ranguy informed him that Karen Skeen was still breathing after being shot in the head and butchered with a knife.
Germaine Daly (File: November 26th, 2012)
“From what I see, my friend Jared was telling me that “My momma is still breathing, my momma is still alive in there.” So I was, I went in a rage, I started tripping, started cursing up because I wanted to know like why I can’t ker my neighba da hospital, yoh undastand, if ih still di breathe, you know. When I came, it was just two police standing right there. Like forty-five minutes after that the ambulance come, you know. The ambulance came cruising, peeping. I noh know if ih mi done know that di people dehn done dead or so. He neva even mi di rush, tek ih time but da me still hype, I buss open di back door and grab di ambulance bed, pull it out and wahn push it een deh.”
Isani Cayetano
“At the onset of whatever would have taken place in court, as the reporter who covered the initial story, I recall talks of some kind of a psychiatric evaluation to determine the mental state of Jared at the time. What can you tell us in respect of that? Was that ever done, was that entered into evidence at some point? Where are we with that?”
Rene Skeen
“Yeah, they did one, I think it was in 2017 where it was one of the attorney’s dad who’s a doctor who did it. The court didn’t accept it. I don’t know why, I don’t know if it was a conflict of interest, but what I do know is that they are saying that there is no one in Belize qualified to do an evaluation like that. Now the last court hearing we attended, they said they were bringing somebody in from, I think it’s from Great Britain, England that will be doing it and it should be done sometime this month.”
Isani Cayetano for News Five.
