The body of William “Willie Haggart” Moore, the undeclared leader of the Black Roses crew, is to be exhumed very early tomorrow morning and moved from the Calvary cemetery in Kingston to the Dovecot Memorial Park in St Catherine where it will be re-interred.

The police yesterday confirmed the arrangements for the exhumation which Moore’s family applied for about two weeks ago through Brite-Lite Funeral Services Inc Ltd, the funeral home that handled Moore’s funeral arrangements after he was shot dead in April last year.

Town Clerk Errol Greene confirmed Friday that the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) had received the application from Brite-Lite.

“It is before the mayor,” he told the Sunday Observer. “I recommended it to her from last week. I expect to speak with her on it today,” Greene said Friday.

It was not clear why Moore’s family wanted to move his body from Calvary, which is located near to Lincoln Crescent, on the outskirts of Arnett Gardens, where he and two other men were slain in a mid-afternoon gangland style hit.

Neither his widow nor Brite-Lite boss, Tommy Thompson, could be reached for comment yesterday, but a Sunday Observer source said the family had security concerns after attempts were made to desecrate Moore’s grave.

Under The Kingston and St Andrew (Cemeteries) Act, a body can be exhumed only after the applicant is granted a licence by the local health board. Persons convicted of breaching this law can be fined as much as $10,000 or imprisoned with or without hard labour for a term not exceeding six months.

On Friday, Greene told the Sunday Observer that exhumations are normally done at night under the supervision of public health officials.

Tomorrow morning’s exhumation will likely be carried out without the glare of public attention that attended Moore’s killing and flashy funeral held inside the National Arena on May 8.

At the funeral, the country was treated to a show of dancehall fashion and a display of material wealth manifested by a motorcade of stretch limousines, BMWs, Lexsuses, Ford F-150 pick-up trucks, SUVs and other luxury motor vehicles that followed the Mercedes Benz hearse carrying Moore’s casket.

“Yu live in style, so yu haffi go out in style,” one woman was overheard saying as she watched the procession of mourners who had turned out to pay their last respects to Moore, a reputed “don” for Arnett Gardens, a People’s National Party stronghold in South St Andrew where he commanded significant authority.

Officially, Moore was described as a businessman who ran a trucking enterprise and an entertainment complex at the very spot where he was killed on April 18. But he appeared to many to have had resources beyond the capacity of those businesses.

That popular impression of Moore earned Dr Omar Davies, the member of parliament for South St Andrew, public criticism for attending the funeral.

But Davies, in a defiant defence of his decision, blasted the “self-righteous judgment” of the persons who condemned his action and said that having dealt with Moore for almost eight years in his constituency, where he (Moore) helped in peace building efforts, he would not deny him in death.