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St. Maarten – Detectives arrested a 21-year-old man last week as a suspect in a four-year old murder and rape case. The suspect, identified in a press release from the prosecutor’s office as A.R.S.R., is now in pretrial detention for the murder and rape of Clemencia Josie-Ann Julot, who went missing on July 20, 2010 and was found two days later along the Oyster Pond Road on French territory.
The 20-year-old victim left her home on the Tintamarre Drive in Middle Region around 5 a.m. on July 20 for her customary jog. When she did not come back, her father, then 62-year-old Clement Zephir, reported her missing the next day at noon.
A search party found her nude body under a tree, with her hands tied behind her back at a quarter past six the next morning at a location between the Border Bar and the Casablanca brothel.
A week later, the prosecutor’s office tasked a large-scale investigation team (TGO).with the investigation – a first in the history of St. Maarten’s law enforcement history. The team consisted of members of the police force, the Detective Collaboration Team RST, the Royal Marechaussee (from St. Maarten and Curacao), the police forces of Curacao and Aruba and the French-side gendarmerie.
In late September, police started with the distribution of hundreds of flyers across the island in an attempt to get information about the killer and rapist. The prosecutor’s office offered a $25,000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of the perpetrator.
The TGO, consisting of 25 members, had fifteen detectives working full-time on the case. Three suspects were detained and subsequently released because they could not be linked to the crime. Ten people voluntarily provided DNA-material, and all ten were exonerated.
In November 2010, police arrested a man identified as R.B. as a suspect, but five days later he was released, because a DNA-test showed that it was highly unlikely he had had anything to do with the crime.
Then, when all options had been exhausted, the investigation faded into the background without much HOPE that the killer and rapist would ever be found.
In 2013, the investigation picked up again, the prosecutor’s office stated in its press release, and the renewed efforts have resulted in the arrest of the now 21-year-old suspect. The man, who was 17 when the crime took place, has been arraigned before the Judge of Instruction and is now in pretrial detention.
