By Deandrea Hamilton and Dana Malcolm
Editorial Staff
#TurksandCaicos, November 18, 2022 – In a matter of just days, the sister of Denise Buck, Lesley Campbell, will be in the Turks and Caicos to honour her sister’s deep love for Grand Turk, leaving her ashes in the island Buck long called home, the island Denise wanted to be her forever resting place. It is also the island where she was brutally killed in a case which adds to the stack of unsolved murders in the TCI.
It’s almost been a year since Denise Buck was bludgeoned to death in Grand Turk by a home intruder. The body of the 61 year old, who once worked as a restaurant manager, had finally been released to loved ones, where her wish to be cremated and left in her favorite place will be fulfilled. It will be somber, but making the farewell more agonizing for those who cared for her, the gnawing fact that the Royal TCI Police remains silent on the case and clueless about the killer at large.
Denise called the police at 1:07 a.m. on January 3rd saying someone was breaking into her house. By the time police
arrived at the scene she was dead; murdered by a blow to the head and the killer had time to escape, snatch Denise’s phone and get rid of the murder weapon. Denise had significant cash in her home, but the killer did not take the money we were told.
Five months after her death Denise’s sister Lesley spoke to Magnetic Media in hopes of spurring greater activity of the homicide case, which seemed to have been sidelined by police investigators.
“Clearly, probably they’ve never retrieved the phone and they haven’t found the murder weapon. So it’s probably in the creek, isn’t it, at the bottom? That’s where I’d dump it if I was a perpetrator of such a crime and what they have done, I couldn’t tell you to be honest with you.”
In the months since Lesley said there has been no progress to speak of. Details of the case shared by Buck’s sister expose multiple flubs by the police, including mismatched statements to the family and a continued refusal even now to simply declare what time officers arrived at her home after she made the call.
Lesley says they were told the man who killed her sister had even called the police back and told the operator they could come and get Denise because he was done murdering her. Police redacted that statement in a subsequent report and deny the claims.
Lesley is convinced that people know who murdered her sister as blackmail attempts were made on her family.
“I’ve not been able to have any kind of closure or be able to put anything to rest because I am that sort of person.” She told us. “I guess I can sort of park it somewhere and let other things cloud in… but all I want, I’d like the police to do a bit of work and find the murderer because I can’t imagine on a small island like Grand Turk, that somebody doesn’t know who it is, in fact I know that somebody does know.”
Since her murder on January 3, 2022 there have been 30 more people killed in the Turks and Caicos. Our records indicate, of that number only three suspects were identified and arrested.