Police Worry Immigrants' Help in Cases Will Dry Up

The Montgomery murder trial centered on events that took place in August 2005 at a home on a quiet street in Chevy Chase.

The homeowners had arranged to have their wood floors refinished by Hak Bong Kim, a Korean immigrant and carpenter, while they were traveling. They returned to find the work incomplete. Kim, 55, was missing, and there were spots of blood in the house, including the interior of an oven.

In the refrigerator, police officers found a bag from a 7-Eleven store. The contents: two pre-made submarine sandwiches, a bottle of Coke, a bottle of Gatorade and two plastic packages of Crack N' Snack hard-boiled eggs. Outside the house, the covering for a barbecue grill was missing.

Meanwhile, in Fairfax County, another investigation was underway after the discovery of a body in the woods. Michael Schatz, a 29-year resident of Annandale, was walking his mixed-breed border collie outside his townhouse. Something caught the dog's attention, and soon Schatz saw a dark mass that he initially took for an animal.

"As I got closer, I realized it wasn't an animal," Schatz testified in Circuit Court, his voice trembling.

Schatz called 911, reporting that he had found a burnt human body.

Back in Montgomery, Detective Patrick McNerney heard about the body. He learned from Dennis Harris, a Fairfax detective, that an odd material had been found next to it.

"Could it be a grill cover?" McNerney asked Harris, according to both detectives' recollections.

At the Chevy Chase house, detectives went to work on the contents of the refrigerator.

They learned that the missing carpenter in the past had picked up day laborers at a 7-Eleven in Annandale. Sales records from the convenience store pinpointed the date and time that the particular combination of items -- subs, Coke, Gatorade and eggs -- was sold.

Soon detectives were watching a video surveillance recording of the cash register at the moment of the transaction. They spotted a Korean man, who looked like Kim, and a shorter Hispanic man.

Detectives captured the image and copied it onto a flier printed in Spanish, which was distributed in the area of the convenience store.