Friday, October 12, 2018
A NEW TV documentary about the Oakes murder is due for release this autumn.
Among those featured is John Marquis, former managing editor of The Tribune, whose book Blood and Fire threw new light on the 75-year-old mystery when it was published 13 years ago.
Sir Harry Oakes, then the British Empire's richest man, was murdered in his Nassau home in July, 1943. His son-in-law, Count Alfred de Marigny, was tried and acquitted at the Supreme Court in Nassau later that year. The murder has never been solved.
Mr Marquis's book, which claimed Sir Harry was the victim of a local conspiracy, was acclaimed in the Wall Street Journal as one of the top five books in its genre.
Former Harvard professor Edward Jay Epstein described it as "brilliant" and said it would make a superb James Bond style movie.
Critic Sir Christopher Ondaatje described it as the most "accusatory" of all seven books written about the case, and Canadian lawyer Bill Selnes said he felt it got closest to the truth.
The new documentary, by London-based Like A Shot Entertainment, will be screened in Britain in November and is expected to be shown throughout Europe and via the Discovery Channel in North America. It is one of six documentaries in a series about Second World War murder mysteries.
Mr Marquis, 76, was The Tribune's managing editor for ten years until 2009.
He had shown a keen interest in the Oakes murder since his first spell in The Bahamas during the 1960s, when he was a political reporter at The Nassau Guardian and later The Tribune.
At the time, a top-level tip-off about a passport found lying among rubble in a Nassau side street threw suspicion on several leading Bahamian figures.
During a book-signing session after Blood and Fire's release in 2005, Mr Marquis was berated by the widow of a leading Bahamian politician who told him he should not resurrect speculation about the case. She yelled: "Why don't you leave it alone?"
He said: "Reaction to the book convinced me even more that my conclusions were correct."
His involvement in the documentary has inspired him to write an updated version of Blood and Fire, which will include information passed on to him by two sources in the Bahamas shortly before his retirement from full-time journalism nine years ago. It will be published next year.
"These sources were unrelated, but gave me information which led to the same conclusion about the case," Mr Marquis said.
"I feel my new book gets even closer to the solution to the great Oakes conundrum, which is still rated the most compelling murder mystery of the 20th century."
Mr Marquis, who lives in Cornwall, England, has written several other books, including a "portrait" of the Haitian tyrant François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and a study of Sante and Kenny Kimes, the mother-and-son crime team who lived in Nassau during the 1990s.
In his earlier career, he was a prize-winning investigative reporter and international sports writer with Lord Thomson of Fleet's newspapers, then Britain's biggest newspaper chain, and editor of a West Country newspaper group.
In 1974, he won a British Press Award, known as the 'Oscars' of British journalism, for a series on child deaths at two London hospitals.
Comments
John says...
The biggest and cleanest coverup of a murder. Everyone who got too involved got murdered. Then books on the matter were banned to surprise speculation. And the question still is unanswered, at least to some. So who killed Sir Harry Oakes?
Posted 12 October 2018, 5:49 p.m. Suggest removal
gkeato says...
The clue is in "Blood and Fire" and it relates to where they found his passport
Posted 12 October 2018, 7:29 p.m. Suggest removal
Clamshell says...
Like most, I remain fascinated by this story. But, truth told, John Marquis was always a blowhard and that book was bloody awful. Still wishing I could get a refund.
Posted 12 October 2018, 7:58 p.m. Suggest removal
hrysippus says...
nicely put. If you get a refund then let me know how so I can mines too.
Posted 15 October 2018, 2:58 p.m. Suggest removal
EasternGate says...
The old guard white elites of the Bahamas, all knew just who the murderer and his accomplices were. They keep that information in the white community for generations. Some descendants living today know of which I speak but they ain't gonna let black folks know! Sir Etienne knew and carried it to his grave!
Posted 12 October 2018, 8:02 p.m. Suggest removal
Gotoutintime says...
This is true!!
Posted 12 October 2018, 8:36 p.m. Suggest removal
hrysippus says...
EasternHate, you are writing lies. How do you know the Secrets that Sir Etienne took to the grave> You a ghost. eh?
Posted 15 October 2018, 3 p.m. Suggest removal
TalRussell says...
Except what occurred on 10 May 2017 - Nassau Town couldn't possibly have been any more white ruled in 1943 than at any other time under reign and influences of the "White & Mulatto Merchants & Lawyers on and around Bay Street". The same conclusion about who was the white Bay Street man's who murdered Comrade Harry is the same today as it was openly talked on streets Nassau back in 1943. No Comrade Harry secrets went anyone's grave with them. The murderer walked freely and publicly up and down Bay Street and Shirley Street building his wealth for many years after he murdered/hired hit man's, and pillow feathered Comrade Harry.
Posted 13 October 2018, 12:28 a.m. Suggest removal
paul_vincent_zecchino says...
Mr. Marquis' evidence makes the most sense, this was a local job. The theory that Lansky had Sir Harry murdered to clear the path to gambling suffers from one large temporal flaw, doesn't it?
The MOB as a rule was goal oriented, seeking immediate results. If Lansky had Sir Harry killed in 1943, then he should have had large scale gambling immediately thereafter. Instead, it wasn't until the mid-60s when Mary Carter Paint Company, a reputed MOB front, began to build large casinos.
Sure, there was the small, European-style, high entry fee casino on Hog Island run by a Mr. MacKenzie of Providence, Rhode Island. But that likely would not have been of interest to Lansky, would it?
Mr. MacKenzie ran his casino during winter high season, closing it in spring so that he could return to spend the summer in Rhode Island, not exactly exciting to the MOB.
So, for more than twenty years after Sir Harry's murder purportedly to open the door to gambling, the MOB had to wait before it could enjoy large scale casino gambling? This doesn't square with the criminal mentality of seeking immediate gratification, does it? It doesn't add up. Mr. Marquis' local-job theory seems to hold more water, doesn't it?
Posted 13 October 2018, 10:47 a.m. Suggest removal
John says...
Came across some information whilst doing research several years ago where Sir Lynden Pindling was also put on the hit list of Mob Bosses in reference to failing on a promise to deliver casino licenses. And the big concern was how to escape the island once the job was done. Came as a complete shock/surprise as never heard anyone discuss it locally. Would be surprised of what really goes down in this little town. After all the white woman who killed her husband in Lyford Cay is still walking free as a bird on Sunday morning on Sandy Cay.
Posted 13 October 2018, 7:21 p.m. Suggest removal
TalRussell says...
Factually, Paradise Island only came about under Bay Street Boys deal making with front man's hide comrade Bay Street Boy's association with some worst mobsters, gangsters of the day. Rather than another long list books on who really murdered Sir Harry, why not authour first book ever published about "The Untold Told Until Now Story - The Long Hidden Why and What Sir Harry Was Murdered For and Chicken-Feathered?"
Posted 14 October 2018, 2:43 p.m. Suggest removal
Gotoutintime says...
The "White Women walking free" has appealed her convection to Our Court of Appeal. They found that she was entitled to a new trial. She has now appealed to the Privy Counsel for a directed verdict of acquittal. Do you have a problem with a person appealing his or her conviction??.
Posted 14 October 2018, 5:17 p.m. Suggest removal
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