NINE DAYS after she was reported missing by her husband, the body of 32-year-old Bibi Ifill was found yesterday at the bottom of a 20-foot well at the rear of the couple’s Porters, St James home.Police sources said the husband, Mark Ifill, a 49-year-old sub-contractor, was being questioned last night in connection with his wife’s death.The body, partially decomposed, was removed from the well, which was sealed and concealed by a makeshift shed.Reports indicated that Bibi was believed to have been murdered and then thrown into the well.
Bibi’s aunt Elizabeth Lazarus and uncle Tony Sookram were among those gathered outside the Ifills’ home yesterday morning as fire officers tried to retrieve the body from the dry well.Lazarus said her worst fears came true when two Saturdays ago she telephoned her niece as accustomed but repeatedly got the answering service.“I kept calling her and I wondered if she had any money on her cellphone, ’cause we used to talk every day,” Lazarus told the DAILY NATION.She also spoke of hearing Ifill relating how she was encountering problems in the relationship since she married three years ago.The next day (Sunday), Ifill, a store clerk at Clarke’s Service Centre, Satjay Mall, in The City, was declared a missing person by a police bulletin.But as the days slipped by, Lazarus said she began to lose hope that her niece was still alive.“Somebody said they saw Bibi in the bus stand the same Saturday, but knowing her as I do, she would never be alive and not call me,” she sobbed.According to Lazarus, her niece, who hails from Guyana, first came to Barbados three years ago when she met Mark and the two got married.“She sold everything, including all her possessions, to come to Barbados for a better life and look what she got,” Lazarus said.Police and firemen spent all of yesterday morning trying to pull the body from the well.A grief-stricken Sookram just looked at the couple’s home in disbelief, continually shaking his head.He would only describe his niece as a hard-working woman who would now be sadly missed by her two children, a boy and girl, aged 13 and 15 respectively.
