Born to Kill

by T. J. English

  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.

  Tinh was jarred from his musing by the roar of the crowd. It was the bottom of the sixth inning and the Braves had just scored another run, increasing their lead to eight to two.

  “Jesus,” complained Kumor, “this is pathetic. I’ve seen enough. Let’s get the hell outta here.”

  As they headed for the exit, Tinh gave Kumor a good-natured ribbing about his hometown team. “Dan, what happen? You tell me the Phillies a good team, but they no good. They no good at all.”

  Tinh kidded Kumor all the way out into the parking lot. “They terrible, Danny. I think maybe they must be the worst team in all baseball.”

  Kumor smiled. He’d never seen Tinh in such a jocular, carefree mood. The kid actually seemed to be having a good time, just like a nineteen-year-old was supposed to.

  “Ha, ha, ha, Timmy,” Kumor replied in mock seriousness. “Very funny. Very fuckin’ funny.”

  Chapter 13

  By the time Kumor, Oldham, and Tinh returned to New York City, the investigation had definitely kicked into high gear. Not only did the trip to Georgia net an impressive variety and quantity of evidence, but the backup team of Alex Sabo and ATF Agent Don Tisdale had also been busy. Working with information supplied by Tinh, Sabo and Tisdale made a trip of their own to Bridgeport, Connecticut, retracing the gang’s steps there. Accompanied by the local police, they visited the Bang Kok Health Spa and the Vientiane Restaurant, situated a couple of miles from each other on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport.

  At both locations, employees who’d been present during BTK robberies were able to make positive identifications from the thick book of photos Sabo and Tisdale brought with them. Everyone seemed to have an especially vivid recollection of Lan Tran. Even the heavyset American customer whose “session” at the Bang Kok massage parlor was rudely interrupted by the robbery remembered Uncle Lan. He came by the Bridgeport police station and picked out Lan’s photo from an array of more than fifty mug shots.

  Also, Tisdale and Kumor secured another important piece of evidence without leaving New York City. In late June, the two ATF agents paid a visit to Nigel Jagmohan, the BTK’s unlikely East Indian-Trinidadian gang member. Not surprisingly, Nigel had been trying to distance himself from his Vietnamese brothers since the day he was beaten to a pulp and booted out onto the sidewalk in Sunset Park. Afterward, he stopped hanging out with the gang and took a job at a nursing home in the Bronx where his mother worked.

  Kumor and Tisdale found Jagmohan in the dietary department on the third floor of the nursing home. He was taken to the Fiftieth Precinct on Kingsbridge Avenue in the Bronx, where he was given a cup of coffee and seated at a table in the interrogation room.

  Just seventeen years old, Nigel was visibly nervous; his leg twitched as if there were a steady electric current running through it. At first, he was reluctant to tell the investigators anything about the vicious beating that had landed him in the hospital with severe internal bleeding and a fractured skull. Afraid of retribution by the BTK if he cooperated with the cops, Nigel also knew that if he were to explain the reasons behind the beating he would have to admit his own involvement in the Canal Street robbery that led up to it.

  The only reason Nigel eventually loosened up was because his mother was brought to the precinct.

  “You better talk to your son,” Kumor suggested to Mrs. Margaret Jagmohan. “We know Nigel was involved with this gang. We even know the reason he got beat up. If he doesn’t come clean he’s gonna wind up in a lot of trouble.”

  After considerable prodding from his mother, Nigel finally gave the investigators a detailed description of the beating he’d received.

  His description of the robbery was not quite so detailed. Nigel claimed he had only acted as a lookout while Shadow Boy and Johnny Huyhn robbed the jewelry store near the rear of the small shopping mall at 263 Canal Street. He was beaten up later, he said, because David Thai and LV Hong believed he’d absconded with the robbery proceeds. According to Nigel, this was a grave injustice.

  “When the getaway car ran into the telephone pole,” he insisted, “I tossed the bag of diamonds and gold jewelry under a parked car and ran away. I don’t know what happened to it after that.” Whether this story was true or not, the jewelry was never recovered, and David Thai held Nigel personally responsible.

  The statement from Nigel Jagmohan—which implicated LV Hong and Thai in the crime of felonious assault—gave the investigators another piece of evidence they would need if they hoped to convey to a jury the full magnitude of the BTK’s crimes. In court, all the circumstantial evidence in the world was nowhere near as effective as the eyewitness testimony of one simple victim. Nigel Jagmohan was no saint; he had knowingly and willingly joined the gang. Moreover, he was a bit of a punk, with a modest rap sheet that included arrests for robbery and criminal possession of a loaded gun. But his testimony—coupled with that of the Lim family, the robbery victims in Bridgeport, and other victims the investigators were still tracking down—would put a human face on the BTK’s campaign of terror and intimidation.

  The investigation may have been going well, but by July 1991, the same could not be said for the small team of lawmen who were spending most of their working hours gathering evidence, conducting surveillances, and monitoring Tinh’s
whereabouts day and night. In fact, a few of the group could hardly stand the sight of each other—a development that Dan Kumor had dreaded since the day the investigation began.

  To Sabo, Tisdale, and several ATF agents working the case on a part-time basis, the problem was simple: Bill Oldham. Kumor could not say he was surprised. The irony was that Kumor himself was able to see something in the prickly detective that nobody else did, and the two young lawmen had become inseparable.

  Sabo and Tisdale, on the other hand, were both old-school veterans with their own ideas about how investigations should be conducted. Al Sabo had come out of the police academy and joined the NYPD in 1963, when Bill Oldham was barely ten years old. Tisdale was a convivial Irishman, a twenty-year veteran who’d become an ATF agent at a time when the bureau was still thought of as the bastard child of the Internal Revenue Service. Both Sabo and Tisdale had little time for the new breed of hotshot lawmen who, they felt, had been weaned on too many TV cop shows.

  Oldham, usually clad in Armani-style suits and a cashmere overcoat, was a classic example. “Billy’s biggest problem,” Sabo once said to Tisdale in a moment of exasperation, “is that he can’t decide who he wants to be: Don Johnson or Bruce Willis.”

  Personality conflicts are not uncommon in law enforcement. Human nature dictates that when a group of strangers are thrown together, especially in an intense, demanding situation like the evolving BTK investigation, problems can and usually will arise. Most of the time, a sense of professionalism wins out. Supervisors step in, or the agents and cops themselves set aside their differences for the overall good of the investigation.

  For the most part, the BTK investigators were able to keep their personal feelings under wraps. But not always. Once, after hearing that Oldham had gone to their boss and tried to have him removed from the case, Sabo went ballistic. “Just who the hell do you think you are!” the veteran detective challenged Oldham, standing in the hallway outside the offices of the Major Case Squad. At six feet four and built like a longshoreman, Sabo towered menacingly over Oldham before he finally calmed down.

  Sabo was from a generation of cops who believed that if you were having problems with your partner, you took it up with him, not his superior. Oldham was from a different generation.

  “Gee, Al,” Don Tisdale later said to Sabo, “it’s a good thing you didn’t hit him. He probably would have had you arrested.”

  Dan Kumor may have been the youngest of the officers assigned to the investigation, but he was also the agent in charge. As such, he was responsible for seeing that things ran smoothly. Kumor believed the current clash of personalities stemmed mostly from the heavy workload everyone was under. “What we need,” Kumor told his supervisor during their regular Monday morning powwow at ATF headquarters, “is more manpower. How about having another agent assigned full time to the case? Better yet, how about having a full-time agent who speaks Vietnamese?”

  The fact that no Asian agents were working the case on a regular basis had begun to emerge as something of a hindrance, especially now that the investigators were attempting to enlist the cooperation of Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and Korean victims of the gang. So far, language had not been a major problem. But Kumor had a feeling it would be later on.

  Kumor’s most immediate “cultural concern” had to do with his confidential informant. For some time now, he’d been worried that Tinh Ngo was becoming isolated from the investigative team, with whom he had little in common. If nothing else, a Vietnamese-speaking agent would give Tinh someone to talk to in his own language.

  In early July, roughly one month after Kumor, Oldham, and Tinh returned from their trip to Georgia, Kumor got his wish. It had not been easy. Of the three thousand ATF agents stationed in regional offices throughout the United States, there were only a half dozen who spoke Vietnamese—as a native language or otherwise.

  Huyen “Albert” Trinh arrived at ATF headquarters at 90 Church Street wearing a conservative summer suit, a tie, and hair so short it conformed to the contours of his head. At five feet eleven, he was tall for a Vietnamese; his broad, brawny physique was a marked contrast to the lean, bony frames of most BTK gang members.

  Trinh was fresh off the plane from Los Angeles, where he lived and only recently had begun work as an ATF agent. Like Kumor, he was young—just twenty-five years old. The fact that two such relatively young agents would be playing significant roles in a major criminal investigation was, in many ways, unique to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The agency was smaller and, in the eyes of many, less prestigious than the FBI or DEA, which meant it had a less stringent pecking order.

  Meeting Albert Trinh for the first time, Kumor was taken aback by the young agent’s formal, highly polished demeanor. For the last four months, Kumor had been following around a group of scruffy, poorly educated Vietnamese refugees. He’d never met a Vietnamese person like Albert Trinh, who came across as part Ivy League honor student, part Trappist monk.

  “How long you been with the bureau?” asked Kumor once they’d sat down and begun to chat.

  “Just thirteen months,” replied Albert. “In fact, I’ve still got some training to complete down at Glynco.” The ATF training academy, attended by all aspiring agents, was located in Glynco, Georgia.

  “You’ve still got training to complete?” Kumor asked, trying not to sound too startled.

  “Yes,” answered Trinh.

  Kumor grimaced. “Geez, you’re licensed to carry a gun, aren’t you?”

  “Well, not exactly.” Albert explained how a leg injury during training had kept him from getting his gun permit.

  Kumor rolled his eyes. He’d asked for an agent who spoke Vietnamese, and they’d given him one—an agent so green he wasn’t even licensed to carry a weapon.

  “All right,” grumbled Kumor, making his dissatisfaction apparent. “Do me a favor, will ya?” He grabbed the thick BTK photo book off the top of his desk and dropped it into Trinh’s lap. “Look these mug shots over. Get a feel for the players. Then we can talk.”

  As Albert Trinh flipped through page after page of BTK mug shots, the first thought that entered his head was “These guys don’t look like any Vietnamese I’ve ever seen before.” Trinh was struck by the hungry, haunted look on most of the faces. These young criminals appeared crude and unworldly, the epitome of what more established exiles referred to as FOBs, immigrants who were “fresh off the boat.”

  Most of the Vietnamese males pictured in the BTK photo book were not much younger than Albert, but they could hardly have been farther removed. As a well-educated child of diligent, hardworking parents, Trinh was one of the lucky ones. Born in Saigon in 1965, he’d grown up in a household that was middle-class by Vietnamese standards. His father worked as a civil servant, and his mother was a nurse.

  Though he was a toddler during some of the worst years of the war, Albert, the third of seven children, was largely insulated from the turmoil that engulfed his country. Even the American military checkpoints situated throughout Saigon were simply part of the landscape, in place from the day he was born. At the age of five, Albert was sent to an exclusive private grade school where he learned to speak French. As a child, his evenings were spent watching the government-run television station, which showed Bonanza, Star Trek, The Mickey Mouse Club, and other popular American programs.

  Although Albert’s early childhood involved copious input from his country’s most recent colonial rulers, his parents both saw themselves as true Vietnamese. The surname Trinh was historically Chinese, but the family bloodline was deeply rooted in the cultural traditions of Vietnam. Albert’s parents objected to the philosophy of Ho Chi Minh and his Communist followers not so much for ideological reasons but because of the financial chaos they felt would surely follow if United States forces were defeated and the South Vietnamese government toppled.

  When the inevitable finally came to pass in April 1975, eleven-year-old Albert and the rest of his family stood jammed in
a massive airplane hangar with thousands of other Vietnamese waiting to be processed. Albert’s mother had given each of her children a small packet which she told them was “spending money.” But Albert knew that it was more like survival money, in case he and his family were separated during the hectic evacuation.

  In the early morning hours of April 27, 1975, the Trinh family was loaded onto a cargo plane along with several hundred other frightened refugees and airlifted to a U.S. army base in the Philippines. From there they were shipped to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, where they were quarantined and then flown to the United States.

  During the chaotic months immediately following the American evacuation of Saigon, Vietnamese refugees were brought to one of two places: Fort Chaffee, in Arkansas, or Camp Pendleton, seventy miles south of Los Angeles. The Trinhs chose California, where they were eventually sponsored for foster care by a Baptist church near Los Angeles. Albert, his parents, and his siblings were dispersed throughout the community, wherever there was room. Albert wound up living at the Baptist minister’s house, where the first word he learned in English was “thirsty.”

  For Albert Trinh, leaving Vietnam and resettling in the United States was an adventure more exciting than traumatic. Because he was so young, he had not established deep-rooted emotional ties to the country he was leaving behind. For his parents, it was another story. They’d left behind a life-style and social standing attained through years of achievement that, given their age and the broad cultural gulf they now faced, they would probably never be able to reproduce in the States. Success in America, they knew, would come through their children, and they instilled in young Albert a strong determination to become a worthy American citizen.