Karen Campbell, the mother of businesswoman Simone Campbell-Collymore, has revealed the extent of devastation the family experienced in the wake of her daughter being murdered through a plot involving her husband in 2018.
Campbell told Loop Jamaica that members of the family have suffered physical and mental ailments after the now convicted wife killer, Omar Collymore, shattered their lives with his murderous scheme.
She said her own mother has been diagnosed with dementia as a direct result of Simone’s killing, purportedly over a $120 million insurance policy.
Campbell said Simone and her grandmother were very close. She said the day before Simone was killed at the gate of her Red Hills home in St Andrew, she had spent time with her grandmother and even combed her hair.
“My husband and I are really traumatised, her kids not to mention. Her son is now suffering with Alopecia. My son also is suffering from depression. He was in the US Air Force and they had to discharge him due to trauma,” said Campbell who spoke to Loop News on Wednesday after the sentencing of Collymore and his three co-convicts were postponed until Friday.
The others to be sentenced with Collymore in the Home Circuit Court for the murder of Simone and taxi operator Winston Walters are Michael Adams, Dwayne Pink and Shaquilla Edwards.
Simone’s daughter and son were eight and six years old, respectively, at the time of the killing.
“The son doesn’t show any emotion, but we know that he’s hurting emotionally. They have been doing counselling once a week from two times a week.
“The daughter, she sometimes blame herself because she saw things and didn’t say anything, in the sense of at one point she said she was in the car when someone called and it was on the Bluetooth, and that someone asked for the licence plate and he (Collymore) gave her the licence plate.
Simone-Campbell-Collymore
“When her mommy came home she saw the licence plate and realised it was her mommy’s licence plate,” Karen Campbell added.
She said she asked her granddaughter why she didn’t tell her mother, and the child said her mother would have rebuked her for listening to “big people conversation, which we all do as parents”.
She said the counsellor has to reassure her granddaughter that there’s nothing she could have done.
Campbell said her own husband, Simone’s father, suffered physical effects from the stress brought on by the killing that was orchestrated by the man who appeared to be the perfect son-in-law.
Still, Campbell, who is a believer in God and a member of the Duhaney Park New Testament Church of God in St Andrew, said she has forgiven Collymore, and that her desire is for him to repent and make Jesus his Lord.
“I forgive him and I choose that decision for my own peace. The forgiveness was not immediate. It was like two years after while going through all the trauma and depression, and I realised that I was starting to get sick.
“My autoimmune system was getting imbalanced, and I went to the doctor. One day I was laying in bed and I heard a voice saying, ‘In order for you to get healing, you have to learn how to forgive’. And I believe that ‘unforgiveness’ will stop your breakthrough, stop your healing and stop your deliverance,” Campbell added.
She thanked the public, the church and the police for their unwavering support of her family since the disaster.
She also thanked senior prosecutor Andrea Martin Swaby for “standing up for justice” for her family.
