Warning: This includes descriptions of extreme violence.
For almost a month, kidnapping victim Kayla Pawa was shuffled between a series of secret locations in Auckland and Northern region where they tortured her with a blowtorch, put the barrel of a gun in her mouth, forced her to sleep on the cold floor of a bathroom, kept her tied in the trunk of a car and at one point was instructed to dig his own grave.
The motive behind the prolonged and violent plan was to break her will: her captors hoped that she could be persuaded, either by fear or force, to show them how to attack her partner online. cryptocurrency booking.
However, it didn't work and now one of the captors is awaiting sentencing.
Disturbing new details of last year's kidnapping have been made public for the first time after a guilty plea from patched Nomads member Carlos Harris, who now admits he was involved in the kidnapping. kidnapping plan.
Harris, also known as C-los Duzit, has been detained since he was the subject of high-profile manhunt last July, after Pawa escaped from the trunk of a car in Tikipunga, Whangarei.
A Auckland District Court The judge has set the sentencing date for the 34-year-old man for September.
Harris was seen on CCTV footage on the night of June 12 last year driving in a convoy towards the Birkenhead house where Pawa stayed with his partner. Days before, Harris had been in the same North Coast at home with other people talking to Pawa's partner โabout how to get moneyโ they believed they were owed, according to court documents provided to the Herald.
"Ms. Pawa assisted them with the operation of Binance (an online cryptocurrency exchange) and online cryptocurrency wallets," the documents state. "One of the men asked Mrs Pawa if he could help them find her money."
The group left empty-handed, but said they would return, and three nights later they made good on their declaration.
'End him'
โIt's closed,โ Harris wrote in a text message and other similar messages minutes before Pawa was kidnapped the following Monday. "Unlock it," she added just two minutes later, followed by "Hey, ASAP."
A short time later, a group of men, most of them unidentified but including Harris, entered the couple's bedroom while they were sleeping. The men had a gun and wore black balaclavas, some of which had the name of the Nomads gang printed on them.
The men warned Pawa that if he screamed they would shoot him.
"Where is?" one of them asked for the money, according to the alleged facts of the case agreed upon by Harris.
It is then alleged that the man holding Pawa gestured towards her boyfriend, Leslie Naidoo, and gave the man holding the gun a brusque instruction: โFinish him.โ
"The man with the gun stayed behind while the other men took Mrs. Pawa downstairs," the summary of facts said. โThe man with the gun told Mr Naidoo to take off his shirt and lie down on the bed. He wrapped a pillow around the gun and told Mr Naidoo he would shoot. [him].
โMr Naidoo was terrified and begged the man not to shoot. After a short period, the man ran out of the room and also left the house.โ
But the captors were far from done with Pawa and sped away from the residence with her.
'Get something to cut your finger off'
Pawa was first taken to an address in Glen Edenwhere she was placed in a garage with her eyes covered by a scarf, authorities allege.
โHer abductors tied her to a chair with a shower curtain or sheet lying on the floor,โ the documents state. โThere were a large number of people, both men and women, present. โThey told Mrs. Pawa to return the money.โ
Harris received an update via text message hours later, at 2:40 a.m.: "He keeps saying he doesn't know."
The victim was given a deadline of 7 a.m. to give the captors access to the cryptocurrency before he had to choose a finger to cut off.
"Can you get some pliers please... something that will cut your finger off?" Harris received a text message at 6:37 a.m.
The amputation threat was ultimately not carried out, but a woman hit her in the ribs with a baseball bat while several men used a hammer in their hands, authorities allege.
While in the Western Auckland At home, Pawa tried to escape but was captured. If she tried again, they warned her, they would kill her.
Blowtorches and butcher knives
After three days, the victim was taken to Harris' home in Glen Eden, where he remained for approximately two weeks.
"The kidnappers continued to ask her if she was ready to transfer money from a cryptocurrency account," court documents state. โShe was also given a laptop for a while and asked to transfer money. Mrs. Pawa was unable to transfer money.โ
For most of the time she was detained at Harris' home, Pawa was locked inside what was described as an โextremely coldโ bathroom. At one point, they confiscated her clothes and her captors refused to feed her for five days, according to the documents. She tried to keep warm by filling empty shampoo bottles with hot water.
Court documents describe in disturbing detail multiple incidents at Harris' home in which Pawa was tortured and threatened with mutilation at the hands of unidentified men.
โWhich side do you want me to take?โ a man asked as he held a butcher knife to her shoulder, after beating her unconscious and then returning hours later with the knife and threats to amputate an entire limb.
On another occasion described by the victim, two people held her down while a third person lit a blowtorch, waving it over her legs and face and threatening to โburn her eyes.โ The threat was not carried out, but the flame was close enough to singe her hair and eyebrows, she later said.
Finally, they put the victim in the trunk of a vehicle (they warned him beforehand that if he screamed they would shoot him) and took him to an abandoned house in a rural area of โโโโKohukohu, in the Far north.
โWhile there, he was told that one of the men had dug a hole for his grave,โ court documents state. "Mrs. Pawa was tasked with helping with the excavation."
laptop cable
At that point, the police were finally alerted to his disappearance. His partner had not mentioned the kidnapping until June 27, just over two weeks after seeing the convoy of kidnappers leave his house.
Once on the case, investigators made some quick progress in locating her thanks to what was believed to be a major mistake by her captors: having her log in on a laptop. After obtaining her Google account information, police traced her IP address to the first house in West Auckland where she was held. They also quickly realized that Harris's house was a place of interest.
Double search warrants were executed at both homes around 3 a.m. on July 4, but Pawa had long since been deported.
Harris was not home at the time of the search, but a series of text messages hours later indicated that he was aware of it and was becoming nervous.
โTell the brother to get rid of Lapy,โ he ordered one person, referring to a laptop.
"I'm drawing now," he texted someone else, adding minutes later: "I'm STUNNING."
Freedom
By that time, Pawa had been moved to a fourth location - from the Far North address to a driveway in Whangฤrei, where she was kept in the boot of a Volkswagen. She was tied with zip ties, she had a scarf around her mouth and the car alarm, which was supposed to sound if the trunk was opened, prevented her from escaping.
On July 6, his 24th day in captivity, he noticed that the alarm seemed to be off. She saw her opportunity.
"He was subsequently able to escape from the trunk of the vehicle," court documents state. "She ran, she called a passing ambulance and they took her to safety."
During a medical check-up shortly afterwards he still had ligature marks on his wrists and ankles, but his injuries were not life-threatening.
"She has been subjected to a terrible ordeal," Detective Sergeant Nick Poland said at the time.
A relative of the victim told Herald Last year, her focus was on making sure Pawa received support after the traumatic experience.
โFinding her alive was the most important thing,โ said the relative. โThat's a big relief for us.
โWe feared the worst and didn't want her to be just another statistic.โ
Harris will face a sentence of up to 14 years in prison when he is sentenced later this year. Several others have also been charged with kidnapping. They have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.
Captain Craig is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the United States and New Zealand.
