TRAGIC DUO: Tracy Bennett and Wayne Hamilton were lovers.
Joseph Kernizan
A BRONX TALE: A cop yesterday walks near the body of one of the two people shot dead — allegedly by estranged husband Joseph Kernizan (right) — at the Holiday Motel in The Bronx Saturday. (
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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.
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