THE police, up to last night, could not say what the motive was for Thursday’s brutal murder of music promoter Christine Hewitt, the feisty, but charismatic and witty former host of TVJ’s Man Talk.

However, Inspector Steve Brown, the spokesman for the police’s Operation Kingfish, said Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas has ordered the constabulary’s Major Investigation Team (MIT) to work with the St Catherine North police in probing the death of Hewitt, whose charred remains were found in a burnt-out Townace minivan, registered 3451EU, along a lonely rural road at Bamboo District in Riversdale, St Catherine on Thursday night.

Inspector Brown said the police were looking at several leads into the murder. In the meantime, the police forensic laboratory analysts were yesterday busy collecting samples from the scene where Hewitt’s body was found, as well as from the burnt shell of the van, which was removed to the Bog Walk police station, about six miles from Bamboo.

The police told the Observer that Hewitt on Thursday borrowed the minivan from a client in Kingston, who had hired her to do promotion work for a new drink.

According to the police, Hewitt, who left for St Ann, was seen at Faith’s Pen in the afternoon with a passenger in the minivan. About an hour later, she was reportedly seen picking someone up in Linstead, St Catherine.

About 6:45 pm, residents of Bamboo, about 10 miles from Linstead, reported hearing explosions and called the Riversdale police station. On arrival, the police saw the minivan ablaze, but the vehicle was destroyed by the time firefighters arrived from Spanish Town, located more than 20 miles away.

The charred remains of a person was found on the back seat of the motor vehicle. Police said they identified the remains as that of a woman by the width of the hip bone. A gold ring and a female gold rope chain were also found.

The owner of the minivan, the police said, has since identified the vehicle as the one he had loaned to Hewitt.

“According to investigations we believe there was a vehicle that accompanied her van to the area. and she could have been killed when the van was set ablaze,” a police investigator said.

Hewitt, a police source said, was sitting on the rear passenger seat of the vehicle at the time, while the speeding accompanying vehicle kept close.

“So far this is a mystery to us as to what happened between Faith’s Pen and Bamboo, but we are on top of it as we are getting good intelligence,” a detective corporal said.

whytetk@jamaicaobserver.com