Jamaican Adventist Deacon Implicated in Murder Found Dead
7 September 2018 | Linton Stephenson (also known as Gary Stephenson), a 59-year-old deacon at the Jamaica-based Mandeville Seventh-day Adventist Church, was found dead yesterday after being named by law enforcement as a “person of interest” in a murder. Stephenson had been on parole after serving time for killing his wife. He was also wanted for assault and illegal possession of a firearm. His body was found in a house just outside Mandeville in south-central Jamaica. Law enforcement suspect that suicide was the cause of death.
Pastor Everett Brown, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Jamaica, had called for the killer of a woman in the Jamaican city of Manchester to surrender to law enforcement after Stephenson was named as a “person of interest” in the murder case.
“We use this medium to unequivocally condemn what appears to be the recent cold and brutal murder in Manchester of yet another female member of the community as reported in the media,” said Brown in a statement released to the media while a search for Stephenson was under way earlier this week.
“We support the security forces in their appeal to the person of interest named in this matter to immediately turn himself over to the police.”
The Jamaica Observer reported that the body of 25-year-old Khyhymn Campbell was found in a cooler box in a car on the country’s Winston Jones Highway last week. Law enforcement reported that the body was nude and had what appeared to be cuts to both the neck and face. The victim’s throat had been slashed.
The statement from the denomination affirmed the dignity of every human being and condemned all forms of abuse, crime and violence.
“We further call upon all Jamaicans, including members of our church, who can assist the security forces in bringing perpetrators of crime to justice to immediately come forward and supply the authorities with whatever information they have through the established confidential channels,” said Pastor Brown.
According to the Seventh-day Adventist denomination’s Office of Archives Statistics and Research, there are 304,021 members and 683 churches in Jamaica.