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Sources: Suspect details slaying of child, mom

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA | rocco.parascandola@newsday.com

December 20, 2007

The man accused of brutally stabbing to death his cousin and her 6-year-old daughter says he flew into a rage because his cousin stirred his drink with her finger, police sources said Wednesday.

The child, he claimed, was not supposed to be killed, but was "accidentally" stabbed when she tried to protect her mother, the sources said.

"We don't believe him," one source said. "The girl has multiple stab wounds on the neck."

The suspect, Camor Harding, 20, was charged with first-degree murder for killing Yolande Beckford, a single mother who worked as a dietitian, and her daughter, Monique, police said.

The victims were found in their apartment in the Wakefield section of the Bronx Tuesday morning by police after Shirley Hilliard Brown, 60, told them she had not been able to reach her daughter or granddaughter since Sunday.

At first, police focused on Beckford's two boyfriends, but both said they had nothing to do with the double slaying.

By Tuesday night, Harding, who had spent the day with mourning family members, had confessed, sources said.

No one was more stunned than his relatives.

"I am really praying that it is not true," said one cousin, Ryan Bryan, 25. "I am really hoping that it is not -- but I think it is. ... I don't know what to say."

Monica Francis, Harding's grandmother, said in a phone interview from West Palm Beach, Fla., that he had been diagnosed with a mental illness while living with her after emigrating from the Caribbean nation of Jamaica about two years ago.

Francis said Harding moved north in June to live with relatives while she was in Jamaica. His mental health was still an issue in New York, but he rebuffed the family's efforts to take him to a hospital, said another cousin, Phyllis Bacchas, 57.

Bacchas said Harding and Yolande Beckford were close and he sometimes baby-sat Monique.

He told detectives, however, that he had seen Yolande previously mix his drink with her finger. When he visited her and Monique on Sunday night, she did it again, he told detectives, sources said.

He had a knife with him that he claims he was going to use to chop up marijuana, sources said. Instead, he allegedly committed double murder, stabbing Yolanda multiple times.

Harding then fled from the fourth-floor apartment down a fire escape, an escape captured on video surveillance, sources said.

"If [not taking his medication] is what caused it, I am very disappointed and sorry that he didn't get the help that he needed," Bacchas said.

At PS 103, meanwhile, counselors helped Monique's third-grade classmates and other students work through their grief.

One student, Paula Sosa, 8, said they were told "a bad person got them and they died.

"Someone said they feel bad, but I said it is OK because she is somewhere safe," Paula said.

Adam Pincus contributed to this story.