Justice for Khanice - 20-y-o accounting clerk’s killer gets life sentence

Confessed killer Robert Fowler was on Thursday sentenced to life in prison and ordered to serve 22 years and 11 months before becoming eligible for parole for the murder of 20-year-old accounting clerk Khanice Jackson.

Jackson's mother Collette Anthony-Jackson acknowledged that Fowler's punishment provided "some comfort".

"One has to understand that in these circumstances, the family gets a sentence, too," she said, clutching to her husband, Roy, outside the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston.

"We are sentenced to mourn and grieve for the rest of our lives what we thought would be ours for the rest of her life. What we lost is not something that a sentence can ever make up for."

Amid the grief and the pain, though, Roy sought to console Fowler's relatives.

"He has also left his family in a similar situation, not identical, but they also are left to mourn. They are in a new situation, which they are uncomfortable with," he said, referring to his daughter's killer.

Jackson and Fowler, a 52-year-old mechanic, met on a public passenger vehicle in 2020. They both lived in Portmore, St Catherine, and worked in Cross Roads in the Corporate Area, but were not romantically involved. According to prosecutors, it became the norm for him to pick her up at a bus stop in Portmore and take her to work.

Justice Leighton Pusey cited the "brutality" of Jackson's slaying as one of several aggravating factors in the sentencing. Fowler admitted, in a caution statement to police investigators, that before leaving Jackson's body in a ditch on Dyke Road in Portmore, he left it in an abandoned building near the old Forum hotel and went to work.

Pusey noted, too, that even after he pleaded guilty to the crime, Fowler gave probation officers a different "version" of how the young woman died. Fowler claimed that Jackson was killed by someone else and that he was "taking her somewhere to see if she revives".

Fowler was taken into custody by the police on March 26, 2021, two days after Jackson decomposing body was found in the ditch. In a caution statement to police investigators, he detailed how he and Jackson had a "disagreement" over money as they travelled together in his car from Portmore to Cross Roads. He described to detectives how he climbed over to the back seat of the car while it was still parked on Passagefort Drive and used a rope to strangle her.

Justice Pusey indicated in court that the conflicting accounts were pointed out to Fowler's attorney, Linden Wellesley.

"He consulted Mr Fowler and Mr Fowler indicated that he sticks by his original statement and that he still accepts responsibility," Pusey said.

Pusey opted to give Fowler a 15 per cent discount for his guilty plea, explaining that the conflicting accounts was one of the reasons the confessed killer did not get a "full discount".