Man who 'killed' estranged wife and lover outside hotel 'stalked' them for months
- Last Updated: 10:37 AM, October 15, 2012
- Posted: 2:18 AM, October 15, 2012
The coldblooded killer who cops suspect gunned down his estranged wife and her lover outside a Bronx motel had tormented and stalked them for months — but wanted to wait until he caught them together to murder them, a friend of the slain man said yesterday.
Portly barber-turned-club-promoter Joseph Kernizan was still on the lam last night after allegedly shooting to death his wife, Tracy Bennett, and her boyfriend, reggae star Wayne “Captain Barkey” Hamilton, as the pair left the Holiday Motel after a tryst early Saturday.
Bennett, 38, and a mother of three, had begged for her life in the parking lot before being shot, witnesses said.
Seth Gottfried
A BRONX TALE: A cop yesterday walks near the body of one of the two people shot dead — allegedly by estranged husband Joseph Kernizan — at the Holiday Motel in The Bronx Saturday.
Hamilton’s grieving music partner, David “Wickerman’’ Taylor, tearfully recalled to The Post how his buddy would still see Bennett despite Kernizan’s threatening behavior.
“It was August when he told me that this man in New York was following him,” Taylor said in an emotional interview from Jamaica.
“Barkey said the man trailed him, he was stalking him. And he tried to run him down, off the road. He tried to sideswipe him.
“I said, ‘You’ve got to be careful.’ I warned him, ‘You don’t know what this guy will do.’
“Barkey didn’t show me that he was afraid, but I’m sure he was worried. Every time he would go to New York, this man would find him,’’ Taylor said. “Barkey said, ‘How does this man always find me?’ We figured he had a tracking device on her. And he waited until Barkey and Tracy were together, until he had the two of them together in one place,” to attack, Taylor said.
Taylor said that when he heard Hamilton and Bennett had been shot, he immediately thought of Kernizan.
“That was Barkey’s only enemy,’’ Taylor said. “Barkey was a very nice guy, everyone loved him. He was not a troublemaker.’’
Authorities are centering their search for Kernizan — who is 5-foot-5 and weighs a hefty 220 pounds — on Long Island, where he has family, said law-enforcement sources.
Hamilton, 50, had a wife in Milwaukee but no kids, the pal said. His mother, who lives in Jamaica, is devastated, Taylor added.
In August, Bennett, a registered nurse at Winthrop Hospital, took out a restraining order against Kernizan, 42, who is the father of her two youngest kids, Mia, 12, and Jason, 7.
Records show Kernizan — who goes by the nickname “Country’’ and works at the nightclub Giggles in Hempstead, LI — was then arrested Aug. 17 for contempt.
The suspect — due in court on domestic-violence raps Oct. 22 — has six prior arrests, all sealed, including for robbery, assault and fraud, law-enforcement sources said.
He and Bennett had been married for more than a decade, her relatives said, and were separated but still sharing her Elmont, LI, home.
Kernizan was consumed with jealousy, said Andre Jones, the father of Bennett’s oldest daughter, University of Buffalo student Dajhanae Jones, 17, as he mourned with the murder victim’s family at her mother’s Queens home yesterday.
“He did whatever it took to keep her,” he said. “Like, if she’s not going to be his, she’s not going to be with anyone else.”
Additional reporting by Jessica Simeone, Kenneth Garger and Kevin Sheehan
Bronx motel double-slay suspect kills himself in Florida home surrounded by police
- Last Updated: 5:06 AM, October 18, 2012
- Posted: 12:53 AM, October 18, 2012
- A Haitian musician wanted for killing his wife and her beau at a Bronx motel blew his brains out as police were about to move in on his Florida hideout.
- US Marshals, NYPD detectives and local police tracked Joseph Kernizan, 42, to a home in North Miami, less than a half-mile from the Miami FBI building.
- As they surrounded the single-family home where Kernizan was holed up just before 11 p.m. Tuesday, officers heard three shots.
- A robot sent into the home relayed back video of the gruesome scene — Kernizan, dead of a self-inflicted gun wound, with a .380 caliber semiautomatic pistol at his side and two fully loaded AK-47 rifles in a duffel bag nearby.
- DEADLY TRIANGLE: Joseph Kernizan (above) killed himself as police prepared to move in on the man who murdered wife Tracy Bennett and her lover Wayne Hamilton.
- Tracy Bennett
- Relatives were not surprised he met a violent end.
- “I was worried this would happen. The family is just devastated,” said Marie Kernizan, 41, who was once married to Kernizan’s brother, Jean.
- “Now all we can do is pray for his soul,” she said.
- Kernizan — an Elmont, LI, resident who was prominent in the Haitian music scene in New York and Miami — was wanted for the jealousy-fueled slaying of his wife, Tracy Bennett, 38, and her boyfriend, Wayne Hamilton, 50.
- Kernizan shot dead Hamilton, a Milwaukee resident, outside the Holiday Motel in Eastchester early Saturday. Then he chased Bennett around the hotel building on foot.
- “Please, no!” Bennett begged before her husband shot her dead as horrified witnesses watched.
- Authorities believe Kernizan had stalked Bennett and Hamilton for months, and was waiting for them to get together so he could kill them both.
- After Kernizan fled, members of the New York-New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force tracked him down to a friend’s apartment in North Miami, which they surrounded Tuesday night.
- “I saw lines of police ... ATF, North Miami police, they just lined the street. They had the whole building taped off,” said neighbor David Guillaum, 28.
- Kernizan closed the shades and tried to flee out the back door. But seeing he was surrounded, he ran back and locked himself in the home, sources said.
- Kernizan’s friend walked out and gave himself up 10 minutes later, leaving the gunman inside for the minutes before he killed himself.
- “He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He knew no God. The devil was what he worshiped, cold-blooded murderer that he is,” said Hamilton’s aunt, Beverly Hynes, 64.
- Hamilton and Kernizan “had their fights, and she realized her mistake and was trying to get out,” Hynes said.
- Hamilton, who was a registered nurse, leaves behind three children, 7, 10 and 18 years old.
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