This is the final part of a story, first published in The Sunday Gleaner, exposing a multimillion-dollar car-stealing network, involving the police, that led to the disappearance of businessman Oliver Duncan, 35, and Kemar Walters, a 20-year-old mechanic apprentice. Both men were accosted by policemen on December 23, 2004 at a plaza on Washington Boulevard in St Andrew, and have been missing since.

A second accomplice of the Kitson Town-based leader of the car-stealing ring decided to slowly break away from the group. But he played it safe by maintaining links with the ringleader and his police accomplices, as well as with another splinter group.

He operated a body repair shop in the wider Washington Boulevard area of St Andrew, that was used as a temporary holding area for units stolen in the metropolitan area, as well as a point of contact for members of the ring. This body repairman operated a scam where he crashed cars for owners who wanted to fleece insurance companies. He also was an integral part of a nationwide insurance certificate racket, whereby one could procure an insurance certificate for a fee as low as $3,000.

But the body repairman/racketeer got into the bad books of the leader of the car-stealing ring and his police accomplice - an investigator - by failing to live up to his promise to share his loot from his now b***bing insurance certificate scam. Another corrupt policeman - a corporal - issued the body repairman with a 'pay-over-or-else' warning, but the racketeer refused and countered by threatening to inform the authorities of the policemen's involvement in car-stealing activities.

Relative of racketeer

Kemar Walters, one of the two men who disappeared after being accosted by police on December 23, 2004, was a relative of the Washington Boulevard-based body repairman and insurance certificate racketeer.

Young Walters was described as a 20-year-old 'nerd', who had graduated from Spanish Town High School (formerly Spanish Town Secondary School). He was just an average student academically, but was very good with the technical stuff.

Walters grew up in Kitson Town, but spent a number of years in Portmore with his mother. However, he and his great-grandmother, Ms Iris, were inseparable and it was no surprise when he returned to live with her. To the elders in Kitson Town, he was the well-mannered young man who would always be seen in the company of his grandmother.

Growing up, young Walters was like any average child, and an avid football fan, who dreamed of one day becoming a mechanical engineer. Consequently, in 2002, at the age of 18, he decided to do apprenticeship at his relative's body repair shop in the Washington Boulevard area of St Andrew. Things were, reportedly, not to Walters' liking, but he decided to "stick around until he learned enough of the trade before going on his own".

Left for work

About 7:00 a.m. on the fateful day of December 23, 2004, young Walters awoke, did his chores then left Kitson Town for work at the body shop in St Andrew.

Meanwhile, another rogue member of the car-stealing ring, who operated a body repair shop in the Olympic Gardens/Molynes Road area, drove a blue Honda CR-V motor car he had stolen some months before to his crony's body shop in the Washington Gardens area. The men inspected a set of cars, after which the driver of the Honda CR-V was asked to assist young Walters with a ride to the nearby Washington Boulevard plaza to purchase welding rods.

While the driver waited in the CR-V, an unmarked police vehicle stopped alongside it and two men alighted and approached him. A developed between the CR-V driver and the occupants of the other motor vehicle. Two off-duty policemen who were conducting business on the plaza sought to assure concerned eyewitnesses that the men who had approached the driver of the CR-V were police personnel from the Organised Crime Unit.

Plain-clothes police

On hearing the commotion, Walters went to enquire as to what was happening. Just then, two other unmarked police units pulled up and five men in plain clothes alighted with guns in hand. The police investigator, who was a crony of one of the leaders of the car-stealing ring, remained in one of the cars.

Because the CR-V driver had told the lawmen he was waiting on Walters, they accosted and began to question the mechanic apprentice. He was then handcuffed and placed in the motor car with the police investigator. The driver of the Honda CR-V was handcuffed and placed in another vehicle, while another police officer drove the CR-V. All four vehicles left the scene together and turned on to Weymouth Drive, off Washington Boulevard.

In the meantime, the body repairman/racketeer was at his Washington Boulevard garage awaiting the return of his apprentice, Kemar Walters. The repairman was subsequently informed of Walters' plight, but he said nothing to the other occupants of the body shop; instead he left immediately.

Didn't return home

When Walters did not arrive at his home in Kitson Town at his usual time, and there was no response to calls to his cellular phone, his relatives contacted the body repairman/insurance racketeer. He then relayed to them the incident involving the police.

The racketeer/body repairman was told that he would have to pay over a certain amount of cash in order to get back his relative/ apprentice. But the racketeer refused. The young man was then taken to a police station in St Catherine, where his boss was again contacted and made to listen to the beatings his apprentice/relative was receiving, while begging for mercy. The CR-V driver, who was a renegade from the car-stealing ring, was also shot in the leg at the same police station by a police accomplice of the leader of the auto-theft ring.

When it became evident that Walters' relative/boss would not relent, the young man was taken to the swamplands in the vicinity of the Jam World Entertainment Complex in St Catherine where he was shot and killed. His body was then buried in Constitution Hill, St Andrew, by cronies of the leader of the car-stealing ring.

Opportunity for revenge

Several of the former cronies of the Honda CR-V driver, who had broken away from the original car-stealing ring and had set up a competing operation, were glad for the opportunity to take revenge on him. The ring-leader and his accomplice, the police investigator, wanted the renegade thief's loot. The police investigator also wanted to punish his former crony for openly defying him in the past. The cornered thief's persecutors included his former accomplice, the car alarm technician, a relative and two unidentified policemen.

The CR-V driver was taken to Green Bay in that parish, where the men took turns torturing him while his hands were handcuffed to a rail. The torturing only stopped when he revealed where he had hidden some stolen units and his money.