Has Robert Finzi-Smith solved Cedric Mitchell's murder?

Investigator Robert Finzi-Smith claims sources have told him Cedric Mitchell’s killers threw his body in a pit and doused it in gasoline to mask the smell.

Cedric, a property developer and landlord in Jamaica, was born and raised in Wembley. Since his disappearance in Jamaica in July 2023, his family have been battling to find out what happened to him.

His sister Maxine and best friend Dwile have previously told the Brent & Kilburn Times they believe Cedric was murdered.

Mr Finzi-Smith said his investigation had reached the same conclusion as to who was behind Cedric’s disappearance.

“He is a very slippery individual,” the private investigator said of the man he called “the chief suspect”.

“What is required is that the police bring him in.”

But, said Mr Finzi-Smith, he was puzzled by the actions and inactions of Jamaican police tasked with investigating Cedric’s disappearance.

He said he was writing a report urging them to search two septic pits for Cedric Mitchell’s remains.

Wembley man Cedric Mitchell, a property developer and landlord in Jamaica, went missing on the island in July 2023 (Image: Mitchell family)

The Investigator

“I don’t have police powers,” Mr Finzi-Smith told the Times. But he is a military man and expert security consultant who often makes headlines in Jamaica.

A former infantry officer in the First Jamaica Regiment, he is now a Major in the Jamaica Combined Cadet Force, he said, and has been a bodyguard for prime ministers and religious leaders.

Now a private detective, he admitted it was unusual for him to take on a murder case. He ordinarily deals with “people doing fraud, people trying to hijack people’s land from under them”.

He was hired by Cedric’s family around six months after he disappeared.

“It was on the brink of what you would call a cold case,” he said.

The fact that Cedric has not been legally declared dead also presented a problem, as it prevented him or Cedric’s relatives from accessing things like bank records.

“You try and backtrack to find out who he is, what his antecedents are, who he was associated with, who last saw him, what were the circumstances, did he have any enemies – all of that,” he said.

Within weeks, he believed he broadly understood the circumstances of Cedric’s death.

Cedric Mitchell was described by loved ones as an artistic entrepreneur who loved nature (Image: Dwile Ricketts)

The Theory

Mr Finzi-Smith travelled from his Kingston office to St Elizabeth, the area recently battered by Hurricane Beryl, where Cedric was last seen alive.

“In Jamaica – in England too – small villages or towns have their own network of information. It is very silent but it turns out usually to be very accurate,” said the private eye.

He learned Cedric had entered into an arrangement with someone he later realised “wasn’t necessarily the type of person he should have been associated with”.

One night, Mr Finzi-Smith was told, both men were drinking in the same bar and an argument broke out.

“During the argument, Cedric, in, I don’t know, a very ill-timed and ill-conceived thought process, told them that they were nobody,” he claimed.

“They couldn’t match up to him because none of them had what he had – for instance, $10,000 US in his house.”

That was equivalent to over $1.5m Jamaican.

Private eye Robert Finzi-Smith said he had pieced together what had happened to Cedric based on interviews with people in the local community (Image: Robert Finzi-Smith)

“Shortly thereafter, Cedric was not seen anymore,” the detective said. “I heard he was strangled.

“One of the people that I have on the ground was present when one of the people who I think was part of the problem was bemoaning the fact that ‘they never should have done that to Cedric’.

“Where the information that I have been receiving tries to point me is that he could have been disposed of in a septic pit.

“Somebody told me that they had overheard… that the persons who did it had poured gasoline down the septic tank but didn’t light it… in an attempt to subdue the smell.”

“Culture Shock”

“By around January of this year, I had got the majority of what I’ve just told you,” he said.

“The rest of it has been spent trying to concretise the information… It has been a case of making certain that what I’ve got can hold water.”

Asked whether he felt apprehensive about advertising what he had learned, given the apparent dangerousness of the offenders, Mr Finzi-Smith told the Times: “Forty-three years of doing this, I’ve been shot three times

“I have had close encounters of the ballistic kind too many times. I don’t think I’m omnipotent, but I’m fairly well trained and I try to make certain that I follow the training.

“I do not expose myself around. The only reason I’m talking to you is because I take part of this case personally, because I’ve watched what Maxine in particular has gone through.”

Cedric's sister Maxine Mitchell said in her own Times Series interview that she believed she had been psychologically affected by her brother's disappearance and the police response (Image: Maxine Mitchell)

Her time in Jamaica has been a severe “culture shock”, he said.

“I think she is going to need psychiatric assistance after this… She expects that what would happen here would rival Scotland Yard or the British police, who have a fair amount of resources that far exceed ours.

“The procedures that you would expect are not going to happen that way down here.”

The murder rate is so high in Jamaica, he said, that, “It almost gets to a point where somebody says, ‘Take a number, I’ll be right with you’.”

The Police Investigation

That said, he still finds some decisions in the police investigation difficult to understand – like the alleged failure to conduct forensic testing at Cedric’s home.

“I would have had that place fingerprinted, dusted, checked to see what DNA there was,” he said.

Maxine claimed that police declared there was “nothing suspicious” in his home, even though his money, travel documents, computer tablet and shoes were all missing.

Suspects have also not been properly scrutinised, Mr Finzi-Smith alleged.

“There are people that came to my attention that, if I had been the officer in charge, I would have brought in for questioning. To the best of my knowledge, that has not been done. Which makes me ask why.

“I have information from a reliable source that a shirt that was Cedric’s – and I have a picture of Cedric in it – was being worn by the chief suspect.

“What I am still wondering is why he has not been pulled in for extensive questioning.”

Mr Finzi-Smith said he had learned that child told the police he saw Cedric being “carried away” from his house “by one man he referred to as a Dread and someone else in a taxi”.

“I don’t know what the police may have done to follow up that piece of information,” he added.

Mr Finzi-Smith is calling on the Jamaican authorities to search two possible deposition sites for Cedric's body, based on intelligence he has gathered from the St Elizabeth community (Image: Mitchell family)

Catch Up:

• 'I know my brother has been murdered, but Jamaican police are doing nothing'
• 'I know who murdered my best friend - because he tried to murder me next'

What Next?

Mr Finzi-Smith said he was writing up a report drawing together all the intelligence he had gathered, in the hope it would spur the police into action.

He said two septic pits had been identified to him as potential deposition sites.

“What I would like to see happen is that once we point out the two possible places of the disposal, that they use the fire brigade and their special equipment to check it out,” he said.

“By now you would have nothing but bones – but at least to indicate whether there are bones or there are not..

“I have sufficient faith in the senior superintendent in charge of the parish to have a fairly good anticipation of this occurring. [But] It may not move as rapidly as one would like – especially with the hurricane just passing by.”

The Jamaica Constabulary Force has not responded to the Times’ requests for comment.