Accused of murder, leaving body in tarp, jury acquits Baton Rouge ex-auto shop owner (2024)

A Baton Rouge business owner was acquitted of accusations that he shot and killed his former employee over a money debt, then wrapped the man’s dead body in plastic tarp and left him in the road after the body fell out of a moving vehicle.

Kevin Hewitt Dukes, 49, was tried for second-degree murder in the December 2018 killing of 55-year-old Julius Thomas Sr. State prosecutors sought to prove that Dukes killed Thomas at his auto body shop along Old Hammond Highway, then tried to drive the deceased man out to Livingston Parish to dump his remains.

But their arguments weren’t enough to convince a jury of eight women and four men to convict after listening to more than eight days of testimony. It took about five hours of deliberations before jurors found Dukes not guilty of the murder and obstruction of justice counts late Friday, according to court records.

“We are very thankful to the jury for seeing through to the truth of this case,” his New Orleans attorney Christopher Murell said. “This has been a six-year nightmare for Kevin, dealing with these allegations hanging over his head. And now he’s working on putting his life back together.”

Murell and Baton Rouge civil rights attorney Ron Haley led a legal team attacked prosecutors claims that Dukes lured Thomas to his body shop, King of Karz, the evening of Dec. 4, 2018. Prosecutors called two dozen witnesses to the stand in efforts to prove Dukes guilty of severely beating Thomas and shooting the man multiple times in the head and chest.

During closing arguments Friday, they told jurors Dukes was upset because he felt Thomas owed him a large sum of money. Thomas was a former employee who once rented a repair stall at King of Karz. Dukes closed shop early and called Thomas to his business, prosecutors alleged.

Less than 14 minutes after he arrived, prosecutors said Dukes shot Thomas multiple times and beat him with a steel pipe, then wrapped his body in a plastic tarp and loaded it into the man’s Ford Explorer. He used South Flannery Road as a shortcut to Interstate 12 and planned to drive the body out to Livingston Parish, according to the state’s theory.

It was the same route prosecutors said Dukes used four months earlier afterkilling 38-year-old Fermin Pecina, his former business partner, over a similar money dispute — a case in which he was arrested, but not prosecuted.

But Thomas’ body fell out the back of the Ford SUV when Dukes ran over a bump near the intersection of Jane Seymour Drive, just north of I-12, prosecutors told the jury. The body was immediately discovered by passing rush-hour motorists and Dukes scrambled back to his shop in an effort to clean up the blood trails of the crime leading back to him, according to the state’s case.

“Kevin was able to control the evidence in the Livingston Parish homicide,” East Baton Rouge Assistant District Attorney Irena Zajickova said during closing arguments Friday. “But when his car drove through that intersection and Julius’ body fell out of it, he lost control of the evidence and things started to unravel.”

Livingston Parish deputies arrested Dukes in May 2019 and charged him with second-degree murder in Pecina’s killing. Investigators said he shot the Texas man at King of Karz then dumped his body in a wooded area just off Hood Road, where he was found with a single gunshot wound to the head Aug. 10, 2018. A Livingston Parish grand jury declined to indict Dukes on the murder charge, citing a lack of evidence.

Prosecutors at last week's trial presented evidence from the Livingston case and sought to show a common thread between the two killings.

But Dukes’ attorneys said Dukes was the victim of a home invasion three days before the shooting and Thomas was killed in crossfire when those same gunmen came to his business to rob him again.

On Dec. 1, 2018, two masked men were seen on surveillance footage peeking through the windows of Dukes’ residence in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood. Multiple witnesses called 911 to report the break-in after noticing the unidentified men racing through residential yards. One of the callers was a state prosecutor who lived in the area and testified one of the men fired gunshots at them when they came outside to inspect the suspicious activity.

Murell said Dukes gave police the alleged robbers’ license plate, which was from a white Mercedes registered to Julius Thomas Jr., the victim’s son. Attorneys argued that Thomas Jr. and Quentin Pollard, another of King of Karz’s ex-employees, were the two culprits behind the residential break-in and they pulled up to the auto body shop to steal a safety deposit box filled with cash from Dukes’ office.

Murell told jurors one of the men began shooting at Dukes from the Mercedes while he and Thomas Sr. were in front of the business and inadvertently shot the victim multiple times while Dukes fled to a canal behind the property.

Neither Pollard or Thomas Jr. were ever charged in the homicide. Thomas Jr. died in a hail of bullets in the 2800 block of North Street early the morning of July 14, 2022. He was 32.

He’d been indicted for second-degree murder, accused of ordering the April 2019 fatal shooting of 27-year-old Deldrian Cox. Court records show state prosecutors dismissed the murder charge against Thomas Jr. and his co-defendant in December 2021 after a key eyewitness died.

Murell said jurors heard testimony at trial that Thomas Jr. was implicated in two other murder investigations and was also a suspect in a 2011 shooting. He said Dukes’ phone records show a series of panicked phone calls he made to his girlfriend and family members after the shooting that show it was a botched robbery attempt, and not a premeditated murder that Dukes orchestrated.

Prosecutors said Dukes’ lawyers never confronted Pollard over his alleged involvement in Thomas Sr’s fatal shooting when he testified over the course of two days during the trial.

Dukes faced a mandatory life sentence if he was convicted of the murder charge. He was released from custody this weekend, according to his attorneys.

“We thought the state’s case was based solely on circ*mstantial evidence, and the circ*mstantial evidence in this particular case should not be enough to convict anyone,” Haley said. “Before someone’s liberty is taken away for the rest of their life, stronger evidence should be presented for a jury’s consideration.”