DEFENCE attorney Carlton Colman, who is assisting multiple murder accused Michael McLean, will today begin the closing argument on behalf of the accused.

McLean is being tried for allegedly killing six members of a family in St Thomas in 2006, slashing the throats of five of them and suffocating the sixth.

Colman closed the defence’s case yesterday after calling three witnesses, including the defendant.

The defence attorney had also indicated that he would be calling four doctors who had examined McLean while he was in custody at Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre and had subpoenaed those doctors.

After three of the doctors turned up yesterday, Colman informed Justice Bertram Morrison that, after consulting with his client, they would no longer need the doctors’ evidence.

Besides McLean, two forensic experts, Sharon Brydson and Dr Judith Mowatt, had also testified.

But Brydson, a retired forensics analyst, told the court that she was unable to say whether or not there was any connection between the DNA samples she had tested from the six family members and that of the accused as she had not received a sample from him.

Her colleague, Dr Mowatt, executive director of the Institute of Forensic Science and Legal Medicine, testified that she had not detected any blood on items that she had tested for the accused, including jewellery, a pair of sneakers, socks, shorts, and a car.

However, both experts, during cross-examination from government prosecutors, said that taking a shower and swimming in a pool as well as the sea would eliminate any trace of blood.

They also testified that the use of cleaning agents, for example on a car, sneakers or socks, would either dilute any trace of blood to the point where it could not be detected or completely get rid of it.

The 50-year-old chef and businessman is charged with killing his girlfriend Terry-Ann Mohammed and her nine-year-old son, Jesse Ogilvie, along with her niece, Patrice Martin-McCool, and her children, Lloyd McCool, Jihad McCool, and Sean Chin, who were all killed between February 25 and 26.

Mohammed’s badly burnt body was found in bushes in the community of Needham Pen, while Martin-McCool and her children were found with their throats slashed in bushes near Prospect beach in the parish. The decomposing body of the other victim, six-year-old Jihad, was found in a shallow grave in St Mary one week later.

— Tanesha Mundle