Born to Kill (32 page)

On a map the two investigators and their informant picked up at the airport, Tinh was able to pick out the tiny suburb of Doraville, roughly fifteen miles outside the city. Kumor, Oldham, and Tinh piled into a rented Lincoln town car and drove north, through downtown Atlanta, until they arrived at Northwoods Plaza.

The cops were lucky. Tinh recognized the area immediately. The Sun Wa Jewelry Store, though inauspiciously located in the middle of the outdoor mall, was on Doraville's main thoroughfare, at 5081 Buford Highway. Within minutes, Tinh spotted the store where Odum Lim had been stabbed, shot, and left for dead. It was located not far from a neatly painted sign mounted along the highway that must have held a special irony for Odum Lim. It read:

WELCOME TO THE CITY OF DORAVILLE
“A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE”

Once they'd found the store, Kumor and Oldham drove Tinh back to a hotel in Atlanta, where they checked into two adjoining rooms. They had decided not to take Tinh into the jewelry store. There was no telling how Odum Lim might react to having one of the robbers standing before him again. Besides, there was no reason for Tinh to be there anyway.

Tinh stretched out on the hotel bed, watched TV for a while, and then took a nap. Kumor and Oldham, meanwhile, got back in the car and returned to Doraville.

After arriving at the jewelry store and being buzzed inside, the two investigators introduced themselves to Odum Lim and his wife, Kim Lee.

“We were hoping maybe you might be able to help us,” Kumor explained to the Lims. “We're police investigators from New York, and we're working on an important investigation into the activities of a Vietnamese gang called Born to Kill. We think they may have been involved in the robbery that took place here last November twenty-sixth. Could you describe for us what happened that day?”

Kumor and Oldham were pleased to hear that the Lims' version of the robbery and assault matched Tinh's in virtually every detail.

Even eight months after the fact, Odum Lim was bitter about what he, his wife, and two children had been forced to endure that day. Lim had a deep scar and indentation on the side of his face, where the bullet from Lan Tran's gun exited. Occasionally, he suffered from severe headaches and upsetting flashbacks. The shooting, he told the two investigators, was almost as traumatic as some of the things he'd experienced during the terrifying reign of the Khmer Rouge.

Kumor and Oldham sat riveted as Lim recounted his years in Cambodia in the late 1970s, a slow descent into hell shared by tens of thousands of other Cambodian refugees.

“It all started in Phnom Penh,” said Lim, explaining how he had served in the country's capital city as an interpreter for the U.S. military attaché. When the murderous Khmer Rouge, the Communist regime led by Pol Pot, overran Phnom Penh in April 1975, he and his family were forced into labor camps with other Cambodians. Untold numbers starved to death, or were brutally tortured and slaughtered in the notorious “killing fields” of rural Cambodia.

After three and a half years as prisoners and slaves in their own country, Odum Lim and his wife escaped the work camps and fled on foot toward Thailand. For five agonizing months they endured poisonous leeches and malaria in the rice paddies of western Cambodia, hiding from roaming Khmer Rouge execution squads in search of fleeing refugees. In early 1979, the Lims and a group of fellow refugees finally reached the border, where they were refused entry by Thai government authorities. Forced back into Cambodia, many of the Lims' companions died when they stepped on land mines and were blown to smithereens. Those lucky enough to survive hid in the mountains for four months, then made another run at the Thai border.

This time, Odum and Kim Lee made it into Thailand, where they
spent nearly two years in a refugee camp. For a time, Odum Lim served as a camp administrator. In August 1981, the Lims were sponsored by a Catholic church in Atlanta and brought to the United States as political refugees. Odum Lim worked for a while in a factory cleaning fish, then sold jewelry door to door until he'd raised enough money to open his own store in Doraville.

“For so many years,” Lim said angrily to Kumor and Oldham, “me and my wife survive the worst the Khmer Rouge have to offer. Then we come to United States and almost die in one day. Shot in the head by Vietnamese gangsters.” Lim shook his head in disgust. “The United States have no death sentence, that's the problem. It too easy to commit crimes here.”

As sympathetic as Kumor and Oldham may have been to Lim's political sentiments, they had work to do. They'd brought a photo album containing many mug shots, including everyone they believed had taken part in the Doraville robbery. They needed IDs. They were particularly hopeful of getting positive IDs from the Lims' two daughters, since young children make especially appealing and effective witnesses in court.

Both girls were in school. Kumor decided to wait on the photos, and told Odum Lim that he and Oldham would come back later that afternoon. In the meantime, it was time for the two investigators from New York to pay a visit to Detective Captain Cliff Edwards of the Doraville PD.

After the call from Oldham, Captain Edwards had held off on his own investigation, waiting and wondering what cards the boys from New York were holding in their deck. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?” Edwards asked cordially after Kumor and Oldham had taken seats in his modest, wood-paneled office at the Doraville police station.

Oldham did the talking. As always, he seemed intent on getting as much information out of the local authorities as possible without offering anything in return.

“What we thought you might be able to help us with,” he told Edwards, “is in locating a local Vietnamese criminal. All we have is a first name—Quang. We believe this guy selected the robbery target here in Doraville and another one in Chattanooga.”

“And you want us to help you find Quang?” asked Edwards.

“That's right.”

Cliff Edwards was in his early forties, lean, with thinning blond hair and a friendly, unassuming manner. A Georgia native, he was, by nature, an accommodating sort. But there was clearly a lot these two tight-lipped Yankees from north of the Mason-Dixon line weren't saying.

“Look,” he offered, “nobody wants to see this crime solved more than I do, if you catch my drift. But y'all gonna have to tell me what the hell this is all about.”

It was Kumor who finally filled Edwards in.

“Okay. We've got an informant,” explained Kumor. “A kid who took part in the robbery at Odum Lim's store. Not only has this kid been providing us with information about a powerful Vietnamese gang called Born to Kill, he's been working undercover. The investigation is highly sensitive. We were hoping you could help us tie this robbery at the jewelry store into a federal RICO case, put these guys away for a long time. And we were hoping you could do it as quietly as possible.”

Captain Edwards smiled. “Well, shit,” he replied, “of course we'll help. Why didn't you just tell me all that in the first place?”

“We just wanna make sure,” interjected Oldham, “that you understand when the time comes to arrest this guy Quang, if we find him, we're the ones who get credit for the collar.”

“Collar?” Edwards asked quizzically. “I got a collar on my shirt. You mean arrest?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Oldham retorted.

“Hell, we don't care about that. This is Doraville. There isn't enough crime around here for us to be fighting over who gets credit for arrests.”

With Edwards on board, everything seemed to fall into place. Over the next few days, Kumor and Oldham gathered more evidence than they could have hoped for. Quang Van Nguyen, the BTK's Southern contact, was located and quietly taken into custody. Two sets of fingerprints retrieved from a glass counter at the Sun Wa Jewelry store were positively linked to two of the robbers, Tung Lai and Little Cobra. And the Lims' two children, along with Mrs. Lim, were able to pick out photographs of four members of the robbery crew, including the shooter, Lan Tran.

On the fourth day of their stay in Atlanta, Kumor, Oldham, and
Tinh drove to Gainesville. It took the entire afternoon to find the house on Maverick Trail Road where most of the gang had stayed. They spoke with Kathy Ivester, the Southern belle who lived at the house with her Vietnamese boyfriend. They showed Ivester their book of photos, and she was able to identify mug shots of all of the gang members who'd stayed with her the week of the robbery. She especially remembered David Thai. “That boy tied up my phone for hours,” noted Ivester.

Across the street from the house, the investigators rummaged around in a wooded marsh, looking for signs of the gang's target-practice session.

“I think we hit pay dirt,” Oldham said finally, hunched down in the wet grass near a small pond.

Incredibly, a half dozen shell casings were still scattered in the grass. Later, an ATF ballistics report would link the casings to a Rossi .38 Special, the same gun that was used to shoot Odum Lim in the head.

By the end of the week, Kumor and Oldham could hardly contain their excitement. For the first time, the case was clearly coming into view. They could see the noose tightening around the collective necks of the BTK.

One night during their stay in Atlanta, Dan Kumor noticed that the Philadelphia Phillies were in town. Kumor had grown up on Phillies baseball. When he was a kid, his father would sometimes take him to Philadelphia's old Connie Mack Stadium, where he would gorge on hot dogs and popcorn while reveling in the sights and sounds of the ballpark.

Kumor found Tinh less than enthusiastic when he suggested they take in a game. For Tinh, baseball was an unpleasant reminder of those years when he'd first arrived in the United States and the other kids had ridiculed him about his ignorance of American sports. Baseball, in particular, with its complex rules and slow, subtle pacing, had seemed impenetrable.

Kumor, concerned that Tinh never seemed to have any fun, was adamant. “Look,” he said, “all you've been doing is sitting around the hotel room ever since we got here. You're going—period.”

While Oldham passed the evening at an Atlanta singles bar, Kumor and Tinh drove the short distance to Fulton County Stadium.

There was a sparse turnout—barely fifteen thousand fans in a stadium built for more than fifty thousand. Kumor and Tinh sat beyond the outfield fence in center field.

It didn't take long for the home team to establish a lead. In the first inning, Braves slugger Jeff Blauser hit a pitch into the bleachers for a three-run homer. Dan Kumor groaned; he and Tinh had just sat down, and already his hometown team had fallen behind.

Over the next few innings, while the Phillies continued to take a beating, Kumor and his prize informant had a chance to talk for the first time about something other than police issues. Up to now, the investigators had been so overwhelmed gathering evidence and keeping up with the gang's robbery plans, no one had taken the time to get to know Tinh on any kind of personal level. On the few occasions Kumor had tried to get Tinh to talk about his feelings, Tinh had been reluctant.

The easy, leisurely atmosphere at the ballpark seemed to loosen him up. As the game progressed, Tinh related the story of his life to Kumor in greater detail than ever before. He told how he'd been put on a refugee boat by his parents and sent out to sea when he was a mere eleven years old; how he'd spent two years in refugee camps in Thailand until he came to the United States. Tinh talked about bouncing from foster family to foster family, feeling lost and lonely in a strange country. Occasionally, his eyes would well up with tears. But he always caught himself, as if he were ashamed to show his Amerian overseer that he had feelings.

Listening to Tinh, Kumor was reminded of his own relationship with his father. A strict Catholic who went to mass every day, Kumor's father had provided him with something Tinh obviously never had—a sense of direction. In his own relationship with Tinh, Kumor could sense the yearning for some sort of wisdom or guidance from a male authority figure that Tinh could trust. No doubt this overriding need was what had made Tinh so susceptible to a master manipulator like David Thai.

Between sips of Coke and assorted ballpark concessions, Tinh asked Kumor questions about his life. The young agent tried to give Tinh a picture of what it had been like growing up in Northeast Philadelphia,
one of seven children in a fairly typical middle-class American family.

“It was pretty normal,” related Kumor, “until late in 1985. That's when it seemed like my whole world fell apart.”

One day, not long after his twenty-fourth birthday, Kumor had been driving home when he came across a nasty accident at an intersection near his home. A police car responding to a medical alert had run a red light and totaled somebody's car. Kumor got out of his own car and approached the accident. The car that had been hit looked familiar, but it was so badly mangled he couldn't really be sure. Then he overheard a bystander say, “What a shame. She was such a nice girl. She had six brothers.”

It hit Kumor like a roundhouse right to the jaw: the mangled car was his sister's. Kumor found a cop at the scene, told him who he was, and asked what happened. “I'm afraid your sister was killed instantly,” said the cop.

Kumor's father never really recovered from losing his only daughter so suddenly. Six months later, he collapsed in his driveway after returning from church one morning. Dan was there and had tried to save his father's life with CPR. It didn't do any good. His father died that day from a massive heart attack.

Tinh was quietly amazed as he listened to Kumor relate the tragedies that had shaped his life. Here he'd assumed this blond-haired, blue-eyed American had lived an easy, pampered life. But he too had experienced loss. He too knew what it meant to be dealt a cruel and crippling blow, to be an innocent victim of fate.