Born to Kill (35 page)

Tinh was not able to get any details from David Thai about the location of the robbery. But later that afternoon, when he met Lan Tran in front of the Asian Shopping Mall in Chinatown, he was finally told
they would be robbing a jewelry store on Fourteenth Street, a bustling commercial thoroughfare on the northern edge of Greenwich Village.

Tinh was somewhat surprised that the target was a store outside the city's traditional Asian enclaves. Apparently, David Thai had developed a new philosophy. The BTK was no longer indiscriminately robbing stores, tea rooms, and gambling dens in rival gang territory. On Canal Street, they were running out of stores to rob. The time had come to look elsewhere.

Their geographic range within the city may have been expanding, but the homogeneous ethnicity of their victims remained steadfast. The jewelry store on Fourteenth Street, Uncle Lan told Tinh, was owned and run by Asians; in this case, Koreans. David Thai had been tipped off about the place by a Vietnamese peddler whom the Koreans allowed to sell counterfeit watches from a table in front of the store.

That evening, after Tinh told him what he had learned, Bill Oldham drove the entire length of Fourteenth Street, from one side of Manhattan to the other. Currently under major construction, the street was more chaotic than usual, with gaping holes in the pavement and barriers restricting the flow of traffic, all underscored by the constant clamor of jackhammers. Despite the noise, the cut-rate clothing stores, toy shops, and electronics outlets packed side by side were still doing a brisk business. For two hours, Oldham kept looking until he located two jewelry stores run by Asians—one at Second Avenue on the east side of town, another at Sixth Avenue, four wide crosstown blocks to the west.

The following morning, a couple of hours before the robbery's scheduled 9:00
A.M
. start, Oldham and the rest of the investigative team moved into action. Virtually every ATF agent Kumor had at his disposal was ready. Two agents sat in a car outside David Thai's home in Long Island, waiting to trail Thai and Lan Tran into the city. Another surveillance team was set up outside the safe-house apartment on Forty-sixth Street in Brooklyn, where Tinh emerged with Hawaii Dat, who had finally agreed to come along as his getaway driver.

Even though the investigators were reasonably certain that the gang's target was the jewelry store on Sixth Avenue, just in case, ATF agents Kumor and Tisdale set up surveillance on the other jewelry store,
the one on Second Avenue. The Sixth Avenue store was covered by Oldham himself.

Early that morning Oldham had arisen and pulled his old police uniform out of the closet. He hadn't worn it since making detective four years earlier. The pants were a little tight around the waist, but all in all it was not a bad fit. It would serve nicely for what Oldham had in mind, a scheme that perhaps only he would have had the audacity to attempt.

After donning his uniform, Oldham drove to Fourteenth Street and stood in front of the Eldorado Jewelry Store at Sixth Avenue, waiting patiently for the BTK crew to arrive.

Around 9:00
A.M
., David Thai's gray Jaguar crept by. When it stopped at a red light, Oldham could see Lan Tran lean back in the passenger seat and look him directly in the eyes. Oldham tried to look oblivious, like a neighborhood cop patroling his beat.

Uncle Lan cursed under his breath. The light turned green and Thai's Jaguar continued up Sixth Avenue, then circled the block a couple of times. Each time it came past the store, Oldham was standing there like a lazy patrolman with nothing better to do. The BTK gangsters drove off angrily.

Later, the investigators learned from Tinh what happened. “David and Lan see Billy there, they say they can't do it. Mess everything up. Lan, he curse about it, say, ‘BTK have nothing but bad luck.'”

In the days that followed, Tinh paid close attention to David Thai's reaction to this latest failed BTK robbery. This was the third or fourth robbery that had fallen apart at the last minute, and by now Tinh was certain that somebody would be suspicious. But every time he brought up the subject around
Anh hai
or Uncle Lan, he got the same response. The gang was jinxed, they would say. They were having a bad year. The sun, the moon, and the stars were not properly aligned. Somebody's karma was off.

To Tinh,
Anh hai
's inability to figure out why the gang's robbery plans kept getting derailed was nothing short of astounding. From the day he'd first met David Thai at the Asian Shopping Mall on Canal Street, Tinh had believed the BTK leader to be infallible. To a man, Thai's followers regarded him as all-seeing, all-knowing. His superior
intelligence and sophistication was something Tinh and the other gang members not only took for granted—it was something they had built their lives around, a truism that served as a clarion call to young Vietnamese males throughout the United States.

The possibility that David Thai might be just some run-of-the-mill gang leader with money in the bank and a nice conservative haircut was more than dismaying to Tinh; it was a realization that, once it began to sink in, turned his entire world upside down.

“You sure this guy doesn't suspect anything?” Kumor asked Tinh every time he came by ATF headquarters in the days following the thwarted robbery on Fourteenth Street.

Tinh shook his head, more amazed than any of them. “No. David Thai, he don't suspect nothing. He don't know anything.”

Then, uttering the unthinkable, Tinh added, “In fact, I think maybe David Thai—he not so smart. He not so smart after all.”

Chapter 14

T
hroughout the summer of 1991, as the BTK investigation continued to gain momentum, events far beyond Chinatown added an air of urgency to the efforts of Kumor's team. Across the United States, the subject of gang violence was becoming a hot topic, with the inevitable panel discussions on national TV talk shows like
Geraldo
and
Donahue
.

Street gangs in America had come a long way since the days when the Sharks and the Jets danced their way into the national imagination in
West Side Story
. Uzis, Tech-9s, and other automatic assault guns long ago replaced brass knuckles and switchblades as the weapons of choice in most gang altercations. Nearly ever major city and many mid-sized cities had experienced their share of drive-by shootings, with children and other innocent bystanders falling prey to a spasm of urban violence unlike anything ever seen in the United States before.

Many people blamed drugs, though the reason for the country's burgeoning gang problem was actually far more complex than that. In the West, the Crips
and the Bloods had become the primary source of ego gratification for an entire generation of youths who might have been born within the boundaries of the continental United States but who were as far removed from any realistic hope of economic achievement as the lowliest immigrant. In Los Angeles and in smaller cities like Tacoma, Omaha, and St. Louis, gang colors had replaced school colors as a primary statement of identification for a staggering number of teenagers.

In Southern California, Chicano gangs had existed in
el barrio
since at least the late-1950s and had by now become deeply entrenched in the state prison system. On the street, the traditional Latino gangs were now vying for turf with newer, younger gangs made up of recent immigrants from Central America. In the southwestern states and in Texas, gang violence had claimed the lives of American Latinos in dozens of cities, particularly those in close proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border.

As for Chinese and Vietnamese gangs, the phenomenon was not restricted by regional boundaries. In Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elsewhere, long-standing gangs had regenerated, and brand-new gangs were proliferating. As the country in general became more violent, so did the gangs' criminal activities, with garden-variety robberies and extortions often ending in pointless homicides, brought about by the widespread availability of guns, guns, and more guns.

When it came to the country's growing, multiethnic gang problem, New York City, ironically, had always been something of an exception. In New York, youth gangs were something a wayward kid might join in his early teens before moving on to a more serious, market-driven brand of criminal activity. Groups of people who gathered together to commit crimes in New York usually had some connection to a larger social framework, either within their own community or, in the case of the Mafia, the city at large. Because of the city's population density, criminal activity for profit was stringently organized. Thus, New York City didn't have a “gang” problem. It had an organized-crime problem.

The one part of the city where street gangs had been a significant factor was Chinatown. But even, in Chinatown the gangs had always been part of a larger criminal structure. Gang activity, as violent as it may have been, was usually predicated on a move for turf or power based
on a clear-cut profit motive. In that sense, gang activity seemed to be engineered by forces that were readily understood—at least to the people of Chinatown.

What had terrified everyone so much about the emergence of the BTK was that it appeared to represent a more anarchistic style of gang behavior, one that had the potential to overtake the area's traditional patterns, establishing a senseless, 1990s style, where innocent bystanders would fall prey to random, disorganized bloodletting.

In July 1991—three weeks before the BTK's foiled robbery attempt on Fourteenth Street—an incident occurred that stoked these fears. At one of Chinatown's busiest intersections, a tourist was accidentally shot and killed during a gang dispute.

Rhona Lantin, a twenty-six-year-old bride-to-be from Silver Spring, Maryland, had been out for dinner with a group of friends. Around 11:30
P.M
., she was sitting in the passenger seat of a Ford Explorer driving north on Mulberry Street. As the vehicle crossed Bayard Street, there was a sudden
pop, pop
that sounded so much like exploding firecrackers few pedestrians seemed to notice. The Explorer rolled to a halt as Rhona Lantin slumped over in her seat, shot through the head with a .38-caliber bullet.

It was the night before the Fourth of July holiday and the streets had been swamped with revelers, but no witnesses came forward. Bayard Street ran through the heart of Ghost Shadows territory, and the word on the street was that the shooting stemmed from a power struggle between rival members within the gang. Rhona Lantin, a popular graduate student at the University of Maryland, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Among other things, innocent bystanders getting shot while dining or shopping in the neighborhood was not conducive to a brisk, profitable commercial trade. Once again, gang activity was threatening Chinatown's “life's blood,” a state of affairs that brought about the inevitable loud demands from politicians and business leaders for swift police action against the gangs.

As if the unpredictable antics of Chinatown's many gang members weren't trouble enough, Dan Kumor and the BTK investigators were feeling the heat from other quarters as well. Though few people were
aware of it at the time, a major FBI investigation was under way against the Green Dragons, a gang centered in Flushing, Queens, New York City's second Chinatown. A team of investigators more than twice the size of Kumor's ATF squad had been gathering evidence for months and was rumored to be on the brink of announcing a RICO indictment against the gang.

Like the BTK, the Green Dragons were relatively new on the scene. Comprised mostly of recent immigrants from Fukien Province on China's southeastern coast, the gang had been founded in 1987 by Paul Wong, better known as Foochow Paul. In June of 1989, rival gangsters ambushed Foochow Paul outside a private house in Flushing, filling him with four bullets. While he was recuperating, Green Dragon gang members, on the pretext of being relatives, guarded Paul Wong around the clock, using handguns that had been smuggled into Wong's hospital room in the hollowed-out core of a Yellow Pages.

Foochow Paul survived the assassination attempt, then fled the United States to China. Although he remained the gang's overseer, the Green Dragons' daily operations were subsequently controlled by Chen I. Chung, a skinny twenty-year-old Taiwanese American.

Chen I. Chung presided over a gang of some forty members that robbed and extorted money from restaurants, nightclubs, and pool halls throughout Flushing and the nearby neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens.

Along with the BTK, the Green Dragons had initiated a criminal reign of terror that obliterated Chinatown's traditional borders and balance of power. The more deeply entrenched gangs of the 1970s and 1980s—the Ghost Shadows and the Flying Dragons—had given way to a new generation, of which the Green Dragons were a prime example. They preyed on merchants in a community more prosperous and slightly more middle-class than the city's older Chinatown. They were not connected to any of the traditional tongs or business associations. And they were extremely violent.

It was the Green Dragons who murdered Tina Sham, the young woman who testified against a member of the gang in court. The horrific killing of Tina Sham and her boyfriend had haunted Ying Jing Gan in the weeks leading up to the death of her husband, Sen Van Ta.

Along with being brutal, the Green Dragons were reckless. Another of their many killings involved a young Korean student gunned down in a drive-by shooting the previous winter. The hitmen had mistaken the student for a member of the BTK, who'd been infringing on Green Dragon territory in Queens at the time.

Cathy Palmer, an assistant United States attorney based in the Eastern District of New York, was handling the federal prosecution of the murderous Green Dragons. A small, bespectacled woman in her thirties, Palmer had played a key role in most of the major Asian-crime cases in recent years. She'd indicted Golden Triangle drug lords, and once received a package at her office with a loaded gun inside, rigged to fire when the packaged was opened. Fortunately for Palmer, the gun was discovered and the assassination attempt foiled. “The Dragon Lady,” as she was affectionately known to fellow members of the bar, cops, and newspaper reporters, had gone on to become the foremost Asian-crime prosecutor in New York City, if not the entire United States.