Gary Tesse was murdered in 2022 after criticising Les Cayes prosecutor Ronald Richemond, whom he accused of illegal practices. Forbidden Stories traveled to Haiti to continue Tesse’s investigation.
KEY FINDINGS:
- For the first time, a former henchman of Les Cayes prosecutor Ronald Richemond has accused him of being the mastermind behind the murder of journalist Gary Tesse.
- The official investigation has stalled. The investigating judge in charge of the case fears for his life and has said he may recuse himself.
- Richemond is also accused of seizing and reselling numerous plots of land for an estimated $80,000 per plot, using Haiti’s lack of an official land registry to his advantage.
It was a murder coupled with a voodoo ritual. Reported missing six days before, the body of journalist Gary Tesse was found on the night of October 24, 2022, on a beach in the Baie des Cayes, in southern Haiti. His corpse, returned to the shore by the waves, was mutilated. His eyes had been gouged out, and his tongue and genitals had been cut off. According to local belief, this is intended to prevent the spirit of the deceased from returning to torment his killers.
“This was Commissioner Richemond’s modus operandi. He pulled out teeth, gouged out eyes and cut out the tongue and genitals of his victims,” according to Ricardo Bain, the man who revealed these sordid details and who claims to know the ins and outs of Richemond’s methods.
Apparently, he knew too much – enough to get him imprisoned. Bain, known as “Chito,” was enjoying his newfound freedom in March in the shady backyard of a house in Les Cayes. Speaking publicly for the first time, he was determined to “tell all”.
With a little perfume and a black T-shirt hastily put on, Chito was ready to talk. “I wanted to protect Gary; he was a good man,” he said. A friend of Tesse’s, Chito was also close to the person who allegedly ordered his murder. Although his claims are sometimes difficult to verify independently, lawyers close to the case and the victim’s family support his story.
Chito worked on a team with powerful prosecutor Ronald Richemond, who held the title of government commissioner in Les Cayes. Richemond, with his imposing dark glasses and loud voice, never missed an opportunity to detail to the press his operations aimed at re-establishing “public peace” in his jurisdiction. There was even a time when he called Chito “little brother". But Chito was also close to the Richemond’s “bête noire” – Gary Tesse. He now accuses Richemond of ordering his assassination, a crime that has so far gone unpunished.
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In 2024, Haiti became “the worst nation globally for impunity” for crimes committed against journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, overtaking Syria and Somalia at the top of the ranking. Faced with increased political instability and a failing justice system, Haiti is the country where journalists’ murderers are most likely to go unpunished, according to CPJ. The organisation cites seven unsolved murders since 2019, including Tesse’s.
Forbidden Stories, whose mandate is to continue the work of murdered journalists around the world, went on the ground in Les Cayes to meet key witnesses in the case. Tesse’s murder is emblematic. He attacked the powerful – the town’s lead prosecutor and most influential figure – and paid with his life.
More than two years after Tesse’s murder, the official investigation has stalled. However, Richemond has been charged in the case, according to the investigating judge, Jean Michelet Séide. With our Haitian partner AyiboPost, we investigated the prosecutor whom Tesse accused of murder and land theft.
This article is the third in a series on the murders of journalists in Haiti and the people behind their deaths.
Tesse, a prosecutor’s ‘bête noir’
Described by his colleagues as a “fiery” and “determined” journalist, Tesse hosted a programme called Gran Lakou, or “Big Yard,” on Le Bon FM radio. His thundering voice remains in the station’s archives. “Someone like Ronald Richemond perfectly embodies the evil eating away at our society, like an animal sick with the plague,” he once said. On air, he relentlessly denounced abuses of power, bribes and human rights violations Richemond committed.
Tesse regularly reproached Chito for his closeness to Richemond, which he considered problematic: “My brother, a young man like you cannot agree to follow Commissioner Richemond, who kills people as he pleases. Arresting people illegally, driving others off their land – these are not the actions of authorities worthy of their titles.”
Tesse’s criticism upset Richemond, who would stop at nothing to silence him. In May 2022, he briefly had Tesse arrested, and then he allegedly asked Chito to buy his silence in exchange for 200,000 gourdes (around €1,300), the equivalent of an average year’s salary. Tesse refused, and the situation escalated.
According to Chito, Richemond wanted to “put an end to the matter”. One day, he told Chito to “go and take the journalist by force. He ordered me to put a white sheet and a pickaxe in my car. I told him no.” In messages dated July 3, 2022, a screenshot of which Chito has kept, Richemond also asks to borrow his car for a surveillance operation.
Chito claims he was not present when his friend was abducted. The day after the kidnapping, he himself was arrested and taken into custody.
“Given that I knew all about the murder plot, which I didn't agree with, Ronald Richemond decided to arrest me to prevent me from talking,” he said.
“Chito is a key element in this case because he was in the commissioner’s good graces. He knew everything,” said Josias Jean-Pierre, a lawyer for the Tesse family.
Reached by telephone, Richemond denied any responsibility for the murder. “Why am I being accused? Why me? Is it because I'm a popular man?” he asked. For the first time in over a year, he agreed to revisit the case. Richemond claims to have ordered the police to investigate as soon as Tesse disappeared, and “never saw the body”. He added that “no one should be killed”. For him, Tesse was a journalist who “talked about everything – everything and nothing”.
As for Chito, he was nothing more than an “informant”, a tipster from whom he also borrowed his unmarked car “to fight the gangs”. “He was never part of my team,” Richemond said, describing Chito as a “delinquent” who, according to him, was sent to prison for leading protests.
However, another witness, contacted by our colleagues at AyiboPost, confirmed Chito's statements. Amos André was a bodyguard for Richemond. He recounted an assassination plot that unfolded over several months.
“One day, the commissioner came back from the office and said to us, ‘Gentlemen, Garry Tesse is causing me a lot of trouble. I suggest we send a woman to poison him.’ That was the first plan. It didn't work,” he said.
Plan B was successful. “Ronald Richemond gathered the team and his guys said, in my presence, ‘We've just done a nice job,’ referring to the murdered journalist,” André said. He claims that a man named Wilkens Thiogène was in charge of killing Tesse.
The village where Tesse used to live is a 25-minute drive from the town of Les Cayes. Along the road, rice fields give way to sugar cane fields, filled with the woody scent of vetiver, an aromatic plant. That Sunday morning, women dressed in white were off to mass, while farmers ploughed their fields.
Tesse’s modest house lies just before the village of Cavaillon, below the road. His widow, Yvana, lives there with their daughter and her relatives. She has kept her husband’s passport and ID photo. Emotionally, she described Tesse as an elegant man and journalist who defended the “underprivileged masses” and the “most vulnerable and neglected”, and whose parents were small-scale farmers.
On the day of his death, Tesse left as usual at 9am to prepare for his live broadcast starting at 1pm. He walked up the dirt track between his house and the road and took a seat in a tap-tap, a shared cab. At 7pm, with no news from him, his wife Yvana began to worry.
In the days that followed, she looked for him everywhere, even in hospitals and in prison.
The journalist’s brother, Vano Tesse, managed to track down the tap-tap driver, Jean Willy. “He told me that Gary had been on the phone, that he had gone down to the Bergeau 5 (neighbourhood) and a vehicle was waiting for him. I shared that information on the radio,” he said.
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A few weeks later, Willy was also murdered.
According to lawyer Jean-Pierre, another witness who was eliminated was reportedly a manager at the market where Tesse was allegedly held captive.
The Tesse family was also threatened. “We heard gunshots and the sound of bullets near our house every night,” said his brother. He described his exhaustion and the complexity of lodging a complaint against the town’s most influential figure, the head of the public prosecutor’s office.
Thiogène, an acquaintance of Richemond’s, was arrested in December 2022 and indicted with Tesse’s murder. But on December 8, 2023, he was released following the presentation of a falsified document, which included the forged signature of the judge in charge of the case, Judge Robert Jourdain.
“This order was entirely fabricated by Ronald Richemond,” according to SOS Journalistes. a Haitian press freedom organisation. Jourdain himself alerted his superiors to the forgery.
Once again, Richemond appears to be acting above the law – something he denies. “I don't have the judge’s seal. I don't have the papers. How could I fabricate a fake order?” he asked.
To sum up Richemond's career, Angel, a Haitian journalist who peppers his interviews with musical references, quoted lyrics from Ivorian singer Tiken Jah Fakoly: “Arrived as a saviour, left as a thief.”
It’s an almost mundane story for a government commissioner in Haiti. It starts with a popular prosecutor, celebrated by the people. Between 2019 and 2020, Richemond fought for the safety of the citizens of Les Cayes, leading operations against the Kilikou bandits who were then rampaging through the region. But that was before he got involved in trafficking and became “a nasty guy”.
Angel – with shaven head, joggers, soccer jersey and silver necklace – has also just been released from prison. He was arrested for stealing cars, but denies this. “The commissioner rigged things,” he said. He claims that Richemond asked him to delete a recording of an interview with Didier Chabat, one of the henchmen implicated in Tesse’s kidnapping. He says he refused and was imprisoned. Chabat himself was killed.
“He paid the commissioner’s price,” Angel said.
Land theft, Richemond’s ‘specialty’
Richemond made money by taking over land. “Stealing land was his specialty,” Chito said. “I was often in charge of negotiating on his behalf.”
As proof of these claims, he took Forbidden Stories on a guided tour of the alleged stolen properties. Two armed men, acquaintances of his, were escorts “for added security” as he led the way past a motorcycle parts market, a residential neighbourhood in Les Cayes and rice fields outside town. Behind a plot marked out by wooden stakes, a man was transplanting some rice seedlings.
“Two families are fighting over the land,” Chito said. “The commissioner asked one of the families to grant him three-sixteenths of it to rule in their favour, without any form of legal decision.” According to Chito, those three-sixteenths – known as three “carreaux” in Haiti – were the equivalent of $80,000, which Richemond was able to pocket by selling the land.
“Les Cayes is the jurisdiction with the most land disputes, mainly because the General Directorate of Taxes archives burned down in 2010.”
Michèle Oriol, sociologist and former executive secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Land Use Planning
Chito lifted the veil on Richemond’s methods, employed against a backdrop of family feuds and inheritance disputes.
“When someone owns a plot of land and someone else wants to dispossess them of it, they need a court decision in their favour,” he said. “A way to do that is with an exequatur, an authorisation given by the government commissioner. Ronald Richemond took advantage of this to make a fortune.”
Legal recourse is difficult, as there is no land registry in Haiti. And even if property titles do exist, there are many forgeries in circulation. More often than not, it’s one person’s word – or document – against another’s, to the detriment of the poorest people and members of the diaspora living abroad.
According to Chito, Richemond resold certain plots of land or passed them on to his lovers and henchmen. A former police officer in Richemond's security detail, Mazile Jean Roland, confirms that he witnessed the commissioner stealing land.
To make matters worse, land records have disappeared in Les Cayes. “Les Cayes is the jurisdiction with the most land disputes, mainly because the General Directorate of Taxes archives burned down in 2010,” said Michèle Oriol, sociologist and former executive secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Land Use Planning. Though there is no land registry, deeds of sale and land surveys are recorded by the General Directorate of Taxes. “Richemond has made a living out of it, and has been involved in a lot of conflicts,” continued Oriol, who claims to have written at least two letters to the ministry of justice denouncing Richemond’s actions.
Attempting to resist Richemond and his men means being exposed to their violence. A few hundred metres from the rice fields in a neighbouring village, Vanté Merita, manages the land for the family wronged by Richemond’s three-plot deal, and opposed the appropriation of their land. She was punished for it – her house was set on fire.
She says she was also beaten and arrested by Patrick Clervil, one of Richemond’s armed men. “They persecuted us,” said Merita.
“It’s the law of the jungle,” Chito said. “When Richemond was in office, people were afraid to lodge complaints, because they’d have to go to him to do it.”
Nevertheless, a small shopkeeper in the town managed to oppose – and win – against Richemond in court.
“Work suspended by Les Cayes public prosecutor’s office”: The large red letters, written on the wall surrounding Evens Bernavil’s land in the summer of 2023, are now barely visible – the remains of the long battle he waged against Richemond. He was one of the rare few to file a complaint against the prosecutor, let alone win.
In 2023, Bernavil and his wife, who run a small convenience store in Les Cayes, experienced Richemond’s tactics firsthand. Disabled in the 2010 earthquake, he had to spend more than three months on the run from Richemond’s armed men. In Port-au-Prince, he moved heaven and earth, leaving letters at the offices of ministries and embassies.
“I had nothing to lose,” Bernavil said. “He traumatised me. He forced me to flee. He made me leave my family, my business – I had no choice.”
The dispute originated over a small piece of land, purchased for $8,000, according to the land survey and a notarised deed. In August 2023, Bernavil and his wife planned to build on it and obtained authorisation from the town hall. However, Richemond – who had reportedly received a call from one of the property’s heirs claiming the rights to it – had the work prohibited.
Against a backdrop of litigation, he “wanted to steal the land”, according to Bernarvil. To achieve this, Richemond even went so far as to issue an arrest warrant for the shopkeeper and his wife. The grounds: forgery and death threats against the alleged heir. The Court in Les Cayes ruled this was a “fallacious pretext”, deeming the warrant “illegal and arbitrary”.
When questioned by Forbidden Stories about the allegations of land theft, Richemond doubled down. “These people are grabbing the land. They have fake papers, fake survey documents. Everything is fake, completely fake.” He claimed to have “documents, tangible evidence”.
Near Les Cayes, small planes loaded with cocaine
Lost among the fields of Ducis, a rural municipality located 20 kilometres northwest of Les Cayes, lies a clandestine airstrip. It was on this flat stretch of land, now used for cattle grazing, that a small aircraft reportedly landed on October 19, 2023.
“The plane was found one morning on this field. And shortly after, vehicles arrived carrying police officers and Richemond,” said a farmer interviewed at the site.
According to the Les Cayes public prosecutor’s office, it was a “shipment of cocaine by plane from Colombia”. Southern Haiti is believed to be one of the main “entry points for drugs into the country”, according to UN experts. Cocaine is reportedly transported via small boats or aircraft landing on clandestine runways from South America, with Haiti serving as a transit point before the drugs are shipped to the United States and Western Europe.
Several Haitian political figures have been sanctioned by the US for their involvement in drug trafficking, including former senator for the south, Hervé Fourcand, and ex-senator Rony Célestin – who is the subject of an investigation by Forbidden Stories and its partners.
According to Chito and two other sources, Government Commissioner Ronald Richemond may have become involved in drug trafficking in an “opportunistic” manner. “Once he learns that someone has cocaine, he stages an operation and seizes the goods. Then he hands it over to one of his men, who takes care of selling it,” said Chito, who claimed to have witnessed the negotiations.
At Les Cayes prison last March, Forbidden Stories met with two Colombian nationals detained under Commissioner Richemond’s authority. They were accused of having piloted the small plane that landed on the Ducis airstrip. Both denied the allegations and were later released. The shipment of drugs has not been recovered, and the investigation remains ongoing.
Since Tesse’s murder, the anger hasn’t faded. In the multicoloured studio of radio Le Bon FM, the hosts of the Grand Lakou programme continue to use their microphones to demand justice for their colleague.
“We demand justice for Gary Tesse to the end. We demand that Ronald Richemond be arrested, tried and sentenced,” said Charles Boyer, the head of the show.
The noose is slowly tightening around Richemond. In April he was dismissed, according to SOS Journalistes, after initially being suspended from his post in Les Cayes in June 2024.
“We had to fight hard,” said Guy Delva, head of SOS Journalistes. “It’s very important that he should be dismissed and stripped of his status as prosecutor, which protected him from criminal proceedings in connection with the murder of Gary Tesse.”
Richemond confirmed by telephone that he had been removed from his post, a decision he said he did not understand.
The public prosecutor’s office in Les Cayes is now headed by 40-year-old Government Commissioner Elioth. His arrival was celebrated with jubilation. In his office, a crowd of supporters hugged him and cheered him on: “For life, for life!”
For the time being, Elioth says he has made the fight against “land gangs” a priority. “It's a big danger,” he said. In his eyes, the Richemond case is emblematic of the involvement of local elites in corruption. “Notaries, policemen and bailiffs are all involved,” he said. “It’s a whole system that needs to be dismantled.”
Since then, Richemond and his men continue to roam the town. More than two years after Tesse’s murder, his brother is finally daring to venture out a little more, but doesn't feel safe. “Ronald Richemond’s team is still walking around with guns. They have assault rifles and heavy weapons in their hands,” he said. A few days before our meeting, he came across Richemond’s henchman Clervil in town, his two 9 mm pistols clearly visible.
Reached by phone a few days ago, the investigating judge in charge of the Tesse case was neither reassured nor reassuring. Jean Michelet Séide warned of the difficulties he is facing with this case. “I want to know, and I want society to know who murdered the journalist. But my life is at stake; I don't even have a weapon or an armoured vehicle. After four unanswered letters requesting security measures, I’m at risk of having to leave the case,” he said.
The only person capable of uncovering the truth about Tesse's murder is now terrorised – and almost completely helpless.
FRANCE 24 works with a consortium of media outlets under the umbrella "Forbidden Stories", the aim of which is to investigate the fates of journalists who have been killed or otherwise silenced – and to continue their work.
The network wants to send a clear message: Killing the journalist won't kill the story.
Forbidden Stories article by Eloïse Layan, in partnership with AyiboPost.
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