PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Five Philadelphia men have been arrested and charged with several offenses relating to the kidnapping and murder of Shamari Taylor nearly 20 years ago, U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced Thursday.
Federal investigators say at least nine men were conspiring to rob Taylor of cocaine and cash in the summer of 2006. Investigators say Kenneth Tuck, 51, was recruited to join a plot to kidnap and rob Taylor while dressed as a police officer with Kevin Holloway, 45, and his drug-dealing associates, Mark Scott, 48, and Linton Mathis, 50.
Taylor’s friend, Atiba Wicker, 47, helped lure him to the abduction site on Aug. 26 in West Philadelphia, where, feds say, the other four men, impersonating police officers, using fake badges, patrol lights and guns, abducted Taylor and his girlfriend.
They took Taylor and his girlfriend to a North Philadelphia warehouse, officials say. The kidnappers let Taylor’s girlfriend go within a few hours, but they interrogated and tortured Taylor, suffocated him, and dumped his body in Fairmount Park.
One day after the abduction, Taylor’s family home in West Philadelphia was robbed and ransacked by two armed men who shot Taylor’s mother and sister, both in the head. Both women survived.
Days later, according to investigators, four of the kidnappers moved Taylor’s body, burying him in a vacant lot in North Philadelphia that has since become the parking lot of a charter high school.
About a month after Taylor went missing, Tuck was arrested in Philadelphia in connection with the kidnapping. After two trials, Tuck was acquitted of all charges in 2008, and no one else was charged in connection with Taylor’s kidnapping or death.
Later, investigators found out a member of Tuck’s family paid off a testifying witness at Tuck’s 2007 trial. That witness and others gave false testimony to support Tuck’s alibi for the Aug. 26, 2006, abduction, they say.
Taylor was the son of the late state Rep. John Myers, a Vietnam War veteran who served eight terms in Harrisburg. Myers died before knowing what happened to his son. Taylor’s family knew nothing more about what had happened to him — until, 12 years after Taylor was abducted, his body was discovered in a shallow grave under that North Philadelphia school parking lot.
Holloway, Scott, Mathis, Wicker and Tuck are charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping resulting in death, kidnapping resulting in death, and aiding and abetting. If convicted, the charges carry a mandatory sentence of life in prison for each of them.