American Couple Cleared Of Murder Charges Fletchers’ ‘Season In Hell’ Finally Over

A Caribbean judge threw out murder charges Friday against a rich American couple charged with killing a poor water-taxi driver on the island of St. Vincent, ending their nine months in crowded, decrepit prisons.

Judge Dunbar Cenac said “he found no evidence in the case” proving that Jim and Penny Fletcher murdered Jerome “Jolly” Joseph, 30, last October, and he ordered the 12-person jury to find the pair not guilty.

Family members wept and embraced the couple, who had sailed into Bequia in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Aug. 21 aboard a yacht called Carefree, an early stop on a planned year-long odyssey through the Caribbean.

In a brief statement outside the Kingstown, St. Vincent, courthouse, Jim Fletcher, 50, of Huntington, W.Va., called the ordeal “our season in hell.”

He said: “Justice has been served. We bear no ill will toward the people of St. Vincent.”

He and his wife, Penny Fletcher, 35, then retreated to the luxurious, gated hotel where family members have been holed up for weeks. They sipped on fruit punch, then made plans to travel to Key Largo, Fla., where Jim Fletcher’s parents live.

Cenac’s decision removed the threat of death by hanging, the mandatory sentence for anyone convicted of murder in St. Vincent.

Since October, Jim Fletcher has been living in a gray stone prison built in 1872 for 90 inmates, but now usually holds more than 325. Penny Fletcher has been living at the nearby women’s prison, where she says she was plagued by rats while she slept.

“Words can’t express my happiness,” said Kathlyn Fletcher, 80, Jim Fletcher’s frail mother, reached by telephone in St. Vincent. “All I want to do is hug my child.”

Penny Fletcher spoke to her sister, Eldora Tharpe, of Dayton, Ohio, on Friday by telephone.

“All she kept saying was how odd it was for her to sit on a cushioned chair, since she was so used to sitting and sleeping on boards,” Tharpe said. “We are going to plan a huge family reunion for both Jim and Penny just as soon as they feel up for it and things are back to normal.”