The story of Nora Parham, a woman hanged in the early 1960’s for burning her lover to death, stands out as an unusual tragedy in Belize’s history – a tragic warning of the sordid end that domestic abuse can bring to relationships and more so, the long lasting psychological damage such travesties can have on the lives of surviving children.
There are still some unresolved dimensions of the Nora Parham story, and today, Amandala was confronted with two conflicting accounts of what really led to the tragedy – was it the result of a jealous woman gone berserk on a meek and humble man or was the violence her reaction to unending abuse at the hands of her lover?
Last night, women’s rights activist, Cynthia Ellis-Topsey, recalled the tragedy of the Nora Parham story, popularly held to be the undesirable end to a female broken by domestic abuse.
Sandra Trapp heard the broadcast, and she contends that the story did not go down the way people think it did.
Trapp is the daughter of Kitchell Trapp, a police officer stationed in San Ignacio who is the man Nora Parham killed. Trapp recounted that her father, who was living at the time in Santa Elena, had gone to use the latrine, and Nora locked him inside, doused the latrine with fuel and lit a match.
Parham was convicted and hanged for the killing, and even though some people’s sentiment is that the punishment fit the crime, Ellis-Topsey told us tonight that the biggest tragedy of the story is the 8 children orphaned by the calamity.
One of those children, said Ellis-Topsey, is Dean Williams, who lives in San Ignacio, Cayo. Amandala tried to reach Williams, to no avail.
According to Sandra Trapp, Nora was an uncontrollably jealous woman who despised it when Trapp spoke with other women. She was the abusive one, and she used to throw tantrums, hit him and stone him with things.
Trapp said that while she lived with her mother, Deltrude Uter, she visited her dad at times and saw it happen with her own eyes. She said that apart from that, Nora was a really nice woman.
Cynthia Ellis-Topsey recalls that at the time the Nora story was reported back in the 60’s, there were multiple reports saying that Trapp had been very abusive to Nora.
“There were many media reports and there was no question that he was very abusive,” said Ellis-Topsey.
She said that Williams, now in his 40’s or 50’s, had asked her to document Nora’s story.
The eldest child of Nora Parham, said Ellis-Topsey, was a teen, and as the eldest, essentially tried to take over the role of their departed mother.
Nora Parham was reportedly executed at the age of 36 on June 5, 1963 – the first and only woman to have been executed by our state.