This was an interesting adventure and now a word of caution to those that may be replaceing thier tailpanel.

The pic I took is the parts off the car as I disassembled it to look at it. The lock and the bezel came right out but, the part we are talking about stayed on the tail panel. as described above, metal with foam inserted. It was stuck on the tailpanel, I had to forcefully twist it to get it to "snap" off of the metal. Once removed, I could see that the foam had just got that sticky to almost appear that it was part of the tailpanel.

I can invision it getting thrown out with a tailpanel replacement.

Bill V