TREVOR Taffe, the St Andrew businessman whose sentence and conviction was quashed by the Appeal Court in 2022 and a retrial ordered, in a bewildering about-turn on Thursday morning admitted that he was in fact guilty of beheading the mother of his child in 2012, Nicole Heron, and discarding her body in a septic tank.

Taffe, who had been convicted for that murder in July 2016 by a seven-member jury in the Home Circuit Court and ordered to serve 20 years in prison before being eligible for parole, had maintained his innocence from the get-go insisting that he loved the woman who was the mother of his child and could never harm her.

In an appeal mounted in September of 2022, Taffe through his attorneys sought an order for his sentence to be set aside and his conviction quashed, arguing among other things that the trial judge had erred in not upholding a no-case submission made on his behalf and charging that the judge’s summation showed a heavy bias towards the prosecution. The judges of the appeal in quashing his sentence and conviction ordered a retrial in the interest of justice.

The matter, which was subsequently relisted, was set for case management on Wednesday morning before Supreme Court Judge Justice Leighton Pusey but was pushed to Thursday after Taffe failed to show. The Jamaica Observer was told that he did not arrive on the truck with the other prisoners who were taken for their matters on Wednesday at the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston.

But appearing before Justice Pusey on Thursday morning, Taffe, through his attorney Leroy Equiano, made the surprising about-face, indicating that he wished instead to enter a guilty plea. Quizzed by Justice Pusey whether he understood clearly that in opting to enter a plea of guilt he was admitting that he had killed Heron, and whether he was sure this was what he intended Taffe said, “Yes.”

He is to be sentenced on February 27 next year.

On Thursday, following the hearing, Equiano said he was unable to share with the Observer his client’s reasons for deciding to plead guilty at this time.

The headless remains of then 26-year-old higgler Heron was found in a septic tank at Taffe’s home in May 2012 with a chop wound to the vagina, and multiple wounds to the neck, a month after she was reported missing. Cops also retrieved the burnt remains of her clothing, a wig that she was wearing as well as her phone and charger from the area. Heron, who was the mother of a six-month-old daughter fathered by Taffe, was last seen by her parents on April 3, 2012, heading to his home in Havendale, St Andrew.

Taffe’s 2016 conviction was based purely on circumstantial evidence, as there was nothing linking him to the murder. He, however, said he had reported her missing, but checks found that he had only reported two television sets missing from his home. Taffe during the trial claimed he left Heron at his home on April 5 in the company of his nephew and a worker. He said upon returning the following day, all the individuals were gone, along with the television sets.

Taffe has been in custody since 2012.