Beyond All Repair - Introducing White Devil

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Beyond All Repair has mostly wrapped, but if there are updates in the story or the case, Amory will jump back in here to let you know, so keep following the show! In the meantime though, I wanted to introduce you to another show. It’s from Campside Media and it’s called White Devil. It’s a series that, at first, seems to be a crime story… but there are so many layers to this. It starts with a woman who’s a member of one of the most powerful families in Belize. She’s found on a pier late at night, next to a body. It becomes the country’s biggest news story in a generation. This is the first episode of White Devil. Host Josh Dean — who you might know from The Clearing or Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen — takes us back to the beginning, in 2021, when the nation of Belize was rocked by a shocking death and the arrest of this influential woman. Most people expected that she would just… walk away. But nothing in White Devil is QUITE as it seems… Listen to White Devil wherever you get your podcasts.

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Yodel-yodel-yodel-yodel-yoo-hoo. Hey, it's Amory. Beyond All Repair has mostly wrapped, but as I've said before, if there are updates in the story or the case, you know I will jump back in here to let you know. So stay subscribed or keep following the show however your podcast app works. In the meantime, though, I want to introduce you to another show. It's from Campside Media, and it's called White Devil. It's a series that, at first, seems to be a crime story. But there are so many layers to this. It starts with a woman who's a member of one of the most powerful families in Belize. She's found on a pier, late at night, next to a body.

This becomes the country's biggest news story in a generation. We're about to share the first episode of White Devil with you, in which the host, Josh Dean, who you might know if you listen to The Clearing or Chameleon, Hollywood Con Queen, Josh takes us back to the beginning, in 2021, when the nation of Belize was rocked by a shocking death and the arrest of this influential woman. Most people expected that she would just walk away. But nothing in White Devil is quite as it seems. So here's episode one, and if you like what you hear, the rest of the series is already out so you can listen to White Devil wherever you get your podcasts.

Police Superintendent Henry Jemont was a father of five and a law enforcement veteran. His friends and family say they are stunned by his sudden death and equally shocked that a police officer could die this way. Police in this Central American country confirmed Jemont did not die in the line of duty, but instead in what they describe as an incident. The details disclosed that Jemont and a woman were drinking alone on the pier and both were fully clothed. Details beyond that are scanned.

The exact truth of what happened in Belize on May 28th, 2021, isn't knowable in any objective way. There were two people there alone on an isolated pier, and only one survived to talk about it. There were no witnesses, no cameras. And as the saying goes, a dead man tells no tales. So with that in mind, here's what we know. Sometime around 1230 AM, a security guard outside of some luxury condos

on Ambergus Quay, the largest island off the coast of Belize, heard a gunshot. These condos are adjacent to a brand new luxury resort called Alaya, on the outskirts of the town of San Pedro. If you've been to Belize, you've probably stayed in San Pedro. It's a party town, which fronts the region's largest coral reef, so it's filled with bachelors and bachelorettes, as well as fishermen and scuba divers. It's noisy and can be crowded,

as tourists and golf carts buzz around its narrow dirt lanes, dodging Belizeans selling T-shirts and coconuts. But on this night, it was very quiet. This was pandemic times. When the guards who heard that gunshot got to the pier, they found just one person, a woman they knew well, a young blonde Canadian who lived in the condos they were protecting.

She was in a panicked state, covered in blood, and muttering about an accident. Bobbing in the sea just off the pier was the body of a large black man who turned out to be a cop named Henry Jamat. And not just any cop either. Henry Jamat was a boss, a superintendent. At one time, the second ranking police officer on the island. And there was no doubt about this part. Henry

Jamat was dead. After seven months of being a murder-free island, San Pedro Town was rocked by the news of the death of its former police commander. Just after one, Superintendent Henry Jamut was fatally shot, reportedly with his own weapon. Questions are swirling this morning. A high-ranking police officer dead, a woman connected to a billionaire family

alone on the pier when he died, this morning calls for justice. Police Commissioner Chester Williams, Belize's highest-rank ranking police officer, spoke to the press a half day later on the afternoon of May 29 to update the country on his initial findings in this incredible case of the rich white woman and the dead black cop. Upon investigating, police found the female on a pier. She had what appeared to be blood on her arms and on her clothing. A firearm was also seen on the pier. That firearm has

been retrieved and we have learned that the firearm belonged to the police. And inside the waters, right near the pier, police recovered the lifeless body of Mr. Jamut with one apparent gunshot wound behind the right ear. Behind the right ear. It's exactly where you would put a bullet if you were trying to execute a man. But the only plausible executioner here was a young woman with no criminal record and a very high profile around town. Her name was Jasmine Harton. Jasmine Harton. A socialite accused of killing a police superintendent.

Tonight Jasmine Harton was behind bars tonight. Jasmine Harton was arrested and charged in connection to this deadly shooting. Jasmine Harton was taken into custody and put in a cell. It looked bad, but the way things worked in Belize, everybody figured that this rich, well-connected expat would just buy her way out of it. In this case, everybody was wrong. From Campside Media, this is White Devil, and I'm Josh Deem.

Episode 1, Paradise Lost. lost. I don't typically read the New York Post, but a friend of mine does, and he sometimes sends me links for a laugh. And back in June 2021, he flagged a story about a suspicious killing in Belize and asked me to read it. There's way more to this, he said, than even the baseline story that some rich white lady had killed a black cop in Belize. I didn't have an inkling at the time that this email was about to open a wormhole in my life,

that it would drag us to five countries on two continents and spark a fascination with Illuminati-level conspiracy theory, plus global tax havens and the dying embers of the British Empire. That first day, I was just curious. I made some calls. Hello, good morning.

Hey, it's Josh Dean. Yes, good morning. I'm just arriving at work. Well, I'm glad to, it's nice to meet you. So you've been covering the story? Yeah, since it happened last week's Friday. This is Hippolito Novello, a Belizean journalist who works for a local news outfit called Love FM.

He covers breaking news for TV, radio and online. Just to keep tabs on the story, I checked in with Hippolito frequently over those first few weeks as things unfolded. He explained how it all went down that first day when news of the shooting broke. Early in the morning, I received a message saying that there was a shooting in San Pedro. Not on the surface, a huge thing. Belize is a violent place. Only four countries in the world have higher murder rates. It was ordinary news.

I mean, it happens. And then I receive another message saying that it was a police officer, one of the commanding officers in the police department. So I say, okay, so a police officer being shot and killed is already a huge news for Belize here. Which makes sense. Shootings are relatively common.

Shootings of cops are not. So as the minutes went by, then we heard that it was a foreigner, a female, a white woman who shot and killed this police officer. And the media, we know Henry Jamat. Jamat was an ambitious and respected, even revered cop whose career was on the ascent. Belize is a small place and people are engaged with the news.

Senior public figures tend to be well known. So we knew this was a big deal, this is a big case. Then we got information that this person was the daughter-in-law of Michael Ashcroft, the Michael Ashcroft from Belize and everyone in Belize knows of Michael Ashcroft. Jasmine Harden isn't actually Michael Ashcroft's daughter-in-law, although many people think of her that way. She and Michael's son Andrew never married,

but she is the mother of his twins. So her kid's grandfather is one of the most influential men in Belize. So the story exploded. Now to that mystery in paradise. The partner of a British billionaire son charged with killing the top police officer. For a long time partner with whom she has two children,

Andrew Ashcroft is the son of British billionaire and political power player Lord Michael Ashcroft. Billionaire Lord Michael Ashcroft. Son of Lord Michael Ashcroft. Billionaire Lord Michael Ashcroft. Son of Lord Michael Ashcroft, a British billionaire and the most powerful man in Belize. That name, Michael Ashcroft, pardon, Lord Michael Ashcroft, may not mean much to an American. I had never heard of this bespectacled 70-something Brit

before I stumbled on this story. But he's quite well known to people from the UK. He's a billionaire businessman who has been a very prominent supporter of the Conservative Party. They call them Tories over there. That's the party of Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and David Cameron.

Tories have led the UK government for the last 14 years, and Ashcroft casts a very large shadow in that crowd. People in Belize definitely know Ashcroft. His net worth of $2.2 billion is larger than the country's entire GDP, and he has passports from both countries. He spent three years of his childhood, and now quite a bit of his adulthood, in Belize. Ashcroft is heavily involved in politics,

business, and banking. He even served as Belize's representative to the United Nations from 1998 to 2000. There is literally no one more famous or powerful in Belize to put at the center of a sensational case like this. So this is one of the biggest case I've covered. One of the biggest case I think has happened in BDs in terms of foreign press attention to the country, yes.

It was so much more than a story about a cop killed under mysterious circumstances. Even on that first day, the investigation was raising more questions than answers. Here's Commissioner Chester Williams again, after he's just publicly named Jasmine Harton for the first time. From when she was detained last night, she was not cooperating. She had requested that she needed to have her attorney present in order for her to say what she needs to say. And it is a part of her rights by virtue of the Constitution.

But again, that raises some red flag as to why she would not call for it. Because if you know that you have not committed a crime, then you should be more than willing to want to call for it. This is, of course, what a cop would say. If you're innocent, you should talk. But we all know there are plenty of reasons not to talk to cops in the aftermath of an incident. One of the biggest reasons? In a panic, you may say something you regret. and proceed accordingly.

It's hard to argue with his logic, and yet, on the surface, there was no reasonable explanation for what seemed, at first glance, like a murder. By all accounts, Henry and Jasmine were friends. In fact, he was friendly with their whole family, and it didn't appear to be some entanglement gone wrong. Hartin didn't mention an attack and wasn't claiming self-defense. So assuming Jasmine Hartin was the killer here, the person who fired the gun, why? What had happened between them?

Why were they even on that pier? And in what ways could Jasmine's extraordinarily powerful family have been linked to this case? Since the news of Jamad's death, speculations have been rampant, ranging from the possibility of a homicide to that of a suicide. And the police commissioner making it very clear that just because a very wealthy family is involved does not change how this case is being handled, saying the case is being fully investigated. Jamat's actual family, as well as his police department family,

can only hope that the cop will get what he managed to give to so many families during his career on the force, a passionate commitment to justice. Nobody disputed the fact that Henry Jamat was shot, almost certainly killed by this woman, Jasmine Harden, who was being held in the San Pedro police station without bail. Police said there would be a full investigation. And yet, there was just a feeling in Belize that justice wouldn't prevail, that it would

all just fade away. This is a white woman who has a lot of money. So the public sentiment was that she's going to get away with it. There's no justice. Justice will not be served in this case. Let's back up a couple steps. Belize is a fascinating country that doesn't make a lot of news. If you're looking for it on a map,

it's wedged at the southern tip of Mexico between Guatemala and the Atlantic. It's relatively tiny, with just over 400,000 residents. But that small population is also a racially diverse one. You'll find indigenous Mayans, a large black and Creole contingent, people of European descent, and growing communities of immigrants

from all over the world. It has always been and continues to be a melting pot. About half of Belize's citizens live below the poverty line, and it can be violent, though much of this is gang-related and half of Belize's citizens live below the poverty line, and it can be violent, though much of this is gang-related and centered in Belize City, which used to be the capital

until a hurricane flattened the place back in 1961. That's when leaders decided to relocate the government to Belmapan, a much smaller city and our inland in the jungle. But visitors don't tend to spend much time in the city because Belize is a place blessed with white sandy beaches, turquoise waters, ancient ruins nestled in rainforests, and one of the best preserved coral reefs left on earth.

Every tourist that visits Belize, they head to San Pedro because of the beaches, because of the sea, because of the resorts there and the hotel there. It was at one of those resorts on Emburgis Quay where Jasmine Harton was hanging out with Henry Jamat. So you have a ship of resorts, you have a ship of hotels along the beach there, and these are huge hotels, pretty hotels if you want to call it that,

and people that go there are not necessarily locals. This is only built for tourists who have the money. He means the southern end of the strip, where things are a bit quieter, where Henry and Jasmine were sitting on a pier with no other people in sight. This is after midnight. There's no light. And the cameras at the hotel can't catch that angle. One because it was dark and two, because of a little distance.

So the hotel is far removed from the center of town. It's also worth noting here that Belize was in the middle of a serious COVID wave, and there was an active curfew in place. But there were other people nearby. The first person on the scene was a security guard, who saw Jasmine pacing up and down the pier. This guard worked for a man named Gene Lopez, an ex-cop whose security firm was looking after Mata Rocks,

the resort next door. Lopez is one of the very few people to speak to the press in the days after the shooting, and he shared his story with a reporter from the Daily Mail. I showed up and I eventually saw her there, male. Lopez told his guard to call the police and rushed to the scene himself. He saw a white woman with blood on her clothing and her hands on her head, as if in shock. But as he got closer, Lopez realized that he knew this woman too.

San Pedro is a tight-knit community. The locals all know each other. And Lopez also owns a bar where Jasmine Harden often came with friends, including cops. She was just about the last person Gene Lopez expected to find in a shooting scene. It was kind of hard to believe knowing that she does love freedom and knowing that if you do commit such an offense or such a crime you would be arrested and locked away for a very long time, if not for the rest of your life. Nothing about this made any sense and there was no reliable way to get to the bottom of it. The only two persons who know exactly what

happened are Henry Jamat who is now dead and Jasmine. More after the break. been. More after the break. Meet our summer collection of grillable faves that come on sticks in spirals with bite-sized bursts of flavor and more. From pork belly bites full of barbecue flavor to skewer sensations that will keep the grill going for dessert.

Make this your best summer yet with PC. Imagine you're in Ottawa strolling through artistic landscapes at the National Gallery of Canada. Oh. Then cycling past Parliament Hill. Ah. Before unwinding on an outdoor patio. Oh.

Then spending an evening on a cruise along the historic Rideau Canal. Ah. Before the incident in May of 2021, the Canadian expat Jasmine Harton was not a household name in Belize. She's in her early thirties. She's petite, pretty, and confident. Well known and liked by locals. And a fixture around Alaya, the resort that she and Andrew Ashcroft have spent years building. It had just opened to the public less than a month prior. As you might expect from someone

in the hospitality industry, Jasmine has a reputation as someone who likes to have a good time. People on the island in San Pedro, locals who she would have mingled with or go to bars with or drink with, or her close friend or Andrew's close friend would have known who she is.

But prior to this incident, the country had no idea who Jasmine Harton was. Henry Jamat then was probably the better known of the two of them. Jamat was 42 when he died. He was born in Dengriga, a small town in the south of Belize on the Caribbean coast, where much of his family are still based.

He was the youngest child of a family with 19 kids and the only boy. His family and close friends called him King. And Henry had five children of his own, a boy and four girls. In the wake of Henry's death, people described him as a family man who loved music and fishing.

He held various roles in a career that spanned more than two decades with the police. Prior to his death, he had just been moved from the top job in San Ignacio, in the jungle near the Guatemalan border, to Precinct 2 in Belize City, a difficult post in an area notorious for gang violence. Jamat, he has been a police officer for many years, and he rose up the ranks. Jamat was known to work along with the community, to forge a relationship with community members and to weed out criminals there.

I've met Jamal a couple of times and he's actually very nice. And even though he's very stout and a big fella and very intimidating physically. He really was. Henry weighed over 300 pounds. He was very caring and he was very respectful. A lot of people in San Pedro have a lot of respect for Henry Jamat.

Jamat's funeral was national news. A 30-minute tribute played live on Channel 7, one of the biggest stations in Belize, but it was covered by all the country's major outlets. Numerous friends, family members, and VIPs were there to pay tribute. It's heartbreaking because we have lost a good soldier. We have lost a good police officer. We have lost a warrior.

Ingrained in him, in his DNA, he was always a protector. That man, he protect me for years, like from school, primary school, from bullies, straight up to today, the last, to the last Thursday, you know? He look forward to his career, he look forward to family, and look forward to life. That was Henry J. Mott. Of course, this isn't the full story.

A eulogy rarely is. Henry was at times controversial. There are rumors around Belize that he had close relationships with gang members and clashed with colleagues, including his one-time boss on San Pedro over his approach to policing, which some described as forceful. But perhaps none of this is surprising for a man in this profession, in this place. As a cop, you make enemies when you do your job

Well, and on the day of Henry's funeral the overall feeling was of a country grieving for a much-loved and respected figure tragically lost far too soon My brother loved life. He loved life He had passion for his work He did his work with integrity. He did his work with a passion, and that's the way he loved his family as well. My brother love people.

This is Henry's sister, Cherry. She's also a police officer and had become the official spokesperson for the family. Belize, as I said, is incredibly small. So Henry's death under such public circumstances was a tragedy for the whole country. But also, Henry was a professional. According to his close friends,

not the kind of guy who lived recklessly. Here's Cherry speaking to Hippolito Station. Love, FM. I believe he was killed. I believe he was killed. The investigation can tell me otherwise, but I believe he was killed. I believe he was killed. The investigation can tell me otherwise, but I believe he was killed. Killed and not by accident, as Jasmine had claimed.

The family is not accepting that story, the car-lid, bullshit. They say they don't know what happened, but that accident, purely, they say they don't believe it. We've also spoken to a couple of friends who know that he has always been careful with his weapon. — The family was out there beating this drum. They didn't believe Jasmine Harton. They were certain that this killing was intentional.

This did seem to be the consensus around Belize, too. Few people were willing to accept that this was an accident. They wanted her to rot in jail They wanted her to be in jail that same same very day. They wanted her to to face justice Remember how Chester Williams described her? From when she was detained last night. She was not cooperating Jasmine did eventually speak to the police. In the days after the shooting, reports emerged that Jasmine had told cops in the immediate aftermath that Henry was shot by someone who came by in a boat. And then she quickly recanted that story. Her official statement, known in Belize as a caution statement, was leaked to reporters.

It told a story of a terrible but innocent accident. That Jamat's Glock 17 service weapon misfired as he was teaching Jasmine how to handle it. And this is the story that Jasmine has stuck with to this day. I asked Tipolito what he thought a few days after the story broke. Do you think her version is the truth?

I mean, she did mention that he was teaching her how to handle a firearm because of an incident that happened in Caio a few weeks ago. Caio is a district in central Belize in the rainforest. That incident, in short. Jasmine went to a party and found herself in a scary situation. Feeling unsafe, she'd called Henry, a senior cop who she knew, and who was working in that area to come get her.

He advised her to get herself her own firearms and that he would teach her. And apparently that is what they were doing on the pier, boozing, drinking, and the gun went off. This was the story that Jasmine settled on. That Jamat, her friend, and a man with a sworn duty to protect, was teaching her how to defend herself, how to safely load and handle a gun, when it just went off.

If it was truly an accident, it was extremely bad luck for that bullet to hit Henry in the head at the back of the ear. And he's a huge individual. How do you shoot someone behind the ear and you call it an accident? Henry was a large man, so there's a good chance he survives a single shot from a handgun that hits almost anywhere on his body, except his brain. And three days later, Jasmine was indeed charged for Jamat's death, but not with murder.

Late this evening, 32 year old Jasmine Harten was arraigned in the San Pedro magistrate's court for the charge of manslaughter by negligence for the shooting death of Superintendent Henry Jamott. The charge was levied following a direct... Manslaughter by negligence, the kind of lesser charge that people expected this privileged woman to get. But there's another way to look at it,

that the police didn't have enough evidence, based on findings at the scene in their subsequent investigation, to refute heartened story that the shooting was exactly as she said just a terrible accident to an ex cop like Jean Lopez the bar owner who spoke to the Daily Mail this made perfect sense. If you cannot prove intent then you will not be murdered. You will be considered manslaughter.

There will be an accidental death. Even with negligence, it will still be considered manslaughter because you have to prove intent. But the negligence is a kind of asterisk, and a portion of blame. And even assuming this was an accident, there are a lot of unanswered questions. I believe that there's still more evidence that needs to be collected in order to give

a proper or get a proper conviction or dismissal. The question now is how we got here. A prominent, well-known and well-loved police officer, father of five and man in a committed relationship socializing after curfew hours with a woman who also had a partner. The family, however, is ruling out the idea of suicide. Jamad's sister says it is not a thought they will even entertain as he was aiming to one day become the police commissioner. What were this wealthy young mother and a police officer

in a committed relationship with another woman doing on that pier in the middle of the night? And why would this decorated cop, a man whose friends say he took his duties and his weapon very seriously, hand that weapon to a civilian while drinking? When the story was posted on Facebook, the rumor mill, the teary factory just began exploding. You know, you had hundreds, thousands of Belisians putting their two cents, as we call it, on what happened, why it happened, who were these two persons to each other. Facebook may be a town square for crackpots and old people in the US, but in Belize it is the country's gathering place. It's how information and news travel.

Every major station uses it to broadcast stories and scoops. And then, in comments, people argue out their opinions. I mean in absence of facts, there is room for a lot of speculation. So after the story broke, there were a lot of reports and rumors that Jasmine and Henry were lovers, that because of Henry's job and his reputation and who he was on the island, that he had a lot of enemies and people wanted to kill him. There are also this other theory

that Henry knew things about other high-ranking police officers in the police department. So they said to kill him. It's gotten crazy in terms of this whirlwind of theories. I sat down with Joe Barrett, my producer, to go through some of the many theories posted on social media. Okay, let's have a look at this. There was the notion that Henry was killed as part of a cover-up. Of what?

Unclear. Someone called Lyndon Lopez says, I think he knew something that they didn't want anyone to know about, so they got rid of him. Or that Andrew Ashcroft learned of an affair between them and had Jemat eliminated. The husband had someone bump him off. Case closed.

I think it's worth noting that some of this speculation makes complete sense. Things about the case, at least as reported in the media, did seem fishy. But some of it? Just wild speculation. That said, a few of the theories came up more often. And some of them did seem possible. Like that this was some lover spat.

Yeah, that was one of the first rumors that went around, that they were romantically involved, but people had issues believing the first rumor because it's like, you know, beauty and the beast. This was a common rebuttal I've heard to the love affair angle, that they were just an unlikely couple. But it certainly didn't help that Henry allegedly changed his Facebook profile to single the night before he was killed.

Persons in the media had no idea that there was any sort of relationship between Henry and Jasmine that would lead them to be hanging around, drinking, socializing, on a pair at those hours. hanging around, drinking, socializing, on a pier at those hours. Another theory was that there was actually

someone else there that night. This one had a lot of versions. Yeah, they were saying that there was a third person on the pier, and a lot of people were claiming that it might have been Andrew, because I think the following day, an Ashcroft had left the country. As in to escape the scene and the authorities.

But it was his other brother who left the country the following day, it wasn't Andrew. What gave Credence even a little to the boat story, the idea of a third person, was a growing rumor that Henry had enemies who might have liked him dead. Criminals, yes, but also possibly some within his own police force. When you post up pictures of him on the news outlets and Facebook,

you have one or two comments saying that how Jamaat was a bully. A man in the cell next to Jasmine on her first night in jail was one of those people fueling these rumors. Here's what he told Channel 7. In my heart, I wasn't pissed off with her because I was so happy that I applaud her. Like, a lot of people don't like him here in San Pedro. Why? Because to be really honest, he abused me already, all right?

Physically and mentally. Of course, a man sitting in a jail cell probably would say this about a cop he'd run into before. People will never be satisfied, especially in Belize. People will still have doubt about what truly happened on that day, that night. But what happened that night is only one small part of the story. We'll get into that after the break. You're listening to White Devil from Campside Media. Jasmine Harton had advantages that most citizens

of her adopted country couldn't imagine. She had access to capital and connections that stretched in Belizean terms all the way to the top. There was no way of denying this aspect of the story. The immediate reaction from Belizeans was that because of who she is, that she would basically be untouchable. That was the first sense on that day from the public. To put this into some sort of context, there's widespread disillusionment with the effectiveness of Belize's police at the best of times.

The conviction rate for murder is less than one in ten, and that's before you take into account the kinds of lawyers a woman like Jasmine Harton could afford. For instance, a young black boy on the streets of Belize City would be arrested, charged, immediately taken to court for possession of a little amount of weed. And he will be remanded to prison immediately, quick, fast and hurry. Now, if you're Belizean and you have some sort of influence in the public or you're a public figure or you have money, you will pull strings. And the police officers here will sort of think twice before they even arrest you or try to charge you because of who you are. So the justice system is not balanced. It's basically in favor of the rich and wealthy

and unknown against the poor, less fortunate and the nobodies. The public knows this is how the justice system works. Rich, wealthy, known. Those are adjectives that describe Jasmine's people. The Ashcrofts. The ruling class. And if Leakes could be believed, she wasn't even disputing the fact that she killed a man. Even if it really was an accident, if a regular Belizean citizen killed a cop,

you've got to figure they'd be facing serious jail time. But in this case, it just seemed like a thing people were accepting, that Jasmine Harden would get special treatment. I learned pretty fast that Hippolito seems to know everyone in Belize. He's regularly on the phone to politicians, lawyers, business people, the cops. It's a small country and this is how things seem to work. Powerful people use media relationships to speak to the public, to get a message out. But that's not how things were playing out here.

Nobody was saying a word. In previous cases, you know, our sources would talk to us, give us details, but in this case no one wanted to talk. Like they were scared or afraid of giving directives not to talk. It was ridiculous. Something about this case was different. Normally reliable sources seemed muzzled. And there was one very obvious counterintuitive thing at work here.

A powerful woman like Jasmine Hartn would normally expect to just slip away from this. But the pressure, the unusually widespread scrutiny changed the math for authorities. If they can't successfully prosecute this case, the public will condemn police officers, the public will condemn the investigators. So it's in their best interest to try, I guess, find ways to successfully prosecute this case. Because as I mentioned, Jasmine is the only living person who knows what happened there on that pier, and it's basically her statement as the primary source of evidence. So the only witness was also the only suspect.

And she wasn't talking to anyone. Not at first, anyway. I didn't know what was going on. It was like a bad dream. And I guess he forgot that he had something in the top of the gun. And that's when the gun just went off. And then all of a sudden, they were taping it off

and it was swarming with police and next thing I know I'm brought down to the station for processing and then they kept me for two days and then they brought me out of the police station, walked me across the street and re-detained me. And then I was told by my lawyer that they were going to charge me for manslaughter by negligence and that I would pay a fine, and that everything would be done. Pay a fine for killing a cop? It seems absurd, but that's what basically everybody thought. In the context of Belize's broken, corrupt system, nobody doubted that the rich lady

would just walk free. It's been happening for generations. Except, it turned out to be way more complicated than that. And more diabolical than we possibly could have imagined. This morning, as island socialite turned accused prisoner Jasmine Hartin, who yesterday was denied bail, was set to be transferred to the Colby Foundation's Belize Central Prison. Prison CEO Virgilio Murillo told us that the 32-year-old, who will be dealt with like any other untried prisoner, will become the only Caucasian among 1,041 inmates.

That's next week on White Devil. Anything you want to say for the Jamat family, ma'am? Are you sorry? Under the shade I flourish. Under the rocks and stones. White Devil is a production of Campside Media in association with Olive Bridge Entertainment. The show was written and reported by me, Josh Dean, with the series producer, Joe Barrett. Desert island all along.

The story editor and sound designer is Mark McAdam, who also provided original music. Additional sound design by Joe Barrett. Studio engineering by Ewan Leitremuon. Our closing theme is Under the Shade I Flourish by Chris Halton and New Manhattan, including Eli Carvajal, Hava Carvajal, and Louis Czernyowski. This episode was fact-checked by Sarah Ivry. Additional research by Emma Siminoff and reporting and beliefs by Hippolito Novello.

Artwork by Anthony Garace. A special thanks to our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, Emma Siminoff, Destiny Dingle, and David Eichler. Campside Media's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, Matt Schaer, and me, Josh Dean. At Olive Bridge, the executive producer is Will Gluck.

If you enjoyed our show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. It really does help other people find the show. And here's a thought, maybe tell a friend to check out White Devil while you're at it. Anyway, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. You just heard the first episode of White Devil from Campside Media. The rest of the series is out and waiting for you wherever you get your podcasts.