Emma McManus inquest halted after disputed claims over cocaine

AN INQUEST into the death of billionaire businessman JP McManus’s daughter-in-law has been temporarily halted following a court application for it to be held in private.

Emma McManus (40) was found dead on December 30 by her husband, JP McManus’s son John Paul, in the bedroom of their residence in the luxury Sandy Lane resort in Barbados.

A resumed inquest was due to hear toxicology evidence yesterday. However, it was halted following an application by lawyers for John Paul McManus to a civil court in Barbados for an order directing the resumed hearing be held “in camera”.

At a previous inquest hearing in January there was a conflict between the coroner, Magistrate Graveney Bannister, and John Paul McManus about a phone call allegedly made shortly after his wife’s death.

John Paul McManus denied under oath he had told Magistrate Bannister during the phone call that they had been doing “a little cocaine”. He insisted the coroner had misheard him.

Magistrate Bannister, who is also a priest, said Mr McManus had told an official in the coroner’s office the same thing. But this was also denied by Mr McManus.

Yesterday, Magistrate Bannister

apologised to those present in the Coroner’s Court, saying the proceedings would not be able to go ahead. “The proceedings will be adjourned until a further date due to an application being brought by the family McManus in the afternoon yesterday,” he said. Neither John Paul McManus nor his attorneys were present.

Local lawyers Satcha Kissoon and Maya Carrington filed the application on John Paul McManus’s behalf. They urged the civil court to impose an interim injunction staying the proceedings of the Coroner’s Court.

In the application it is alleged the coroner was biased in his dealings with the billionaire’s son and that he refused John Paul McManus the right to have an attorney present.

Madame Justice Shona Griffith, who heard the application, refused to grant the injunction but agreed to hear an application for the inquest to resume in camera.

Emma McManus’s death came as a huge shock to her family. She left behind three daughters under the age of nine. A daughter of former tennis star and retired businessman Peter Ledbetter, she was a graduate of Trinity College.

She and her husband were married in Portugal in 2010.

They lived in Chelsea, London, but had been in Barbados for a family get together over Christmas.