Police Worry Immigrants' Help in Cases Will Dry Up

The first break came from Sam, a day laborer who told an officer that he knew the man pictured on the flier. Sam -- detectives never learned his last name -- led them to a man who said he believed he knew where the suspect was staying.

At that townhouse development, the detectives eventually spotted the suspect approaching on a bicycle. Carlos Bustamante-Mendieta soon confessed, police said.

He also told investigators that he believed Kim's watch was going to explode and that he had once seen Kim in his native Honduras, police said. Bustamante-Mendieta was later described by his attorney as schizophrenic.

Detectives pieced together the gruesome details. At the Chevy Chase job site, Kim apparently caught the suspect trying to steal jewelry and confronted him. Bustamante-Mendieta stabbed the carpenter seven times and then tried to stuff him into the oven. Bustamante-Mendieta placed Kim's body in the grill cover and drove to Annandale, where he dug a shallow grave, doused the body in gasoline and set it on fire.

On April 2, Bustamante-Mendieta, 32, was convicted of first-degree murder. Sam, who was not asked to testify during the trial, refused to accept a $1,000 reward, detectives said.

Such cooperation might already be waning, even if stepped-up enforcement is in other jurisdictions, according to Detective John Vickery, a Spanish-speaking Fairfax officer. "I've seen the hesitation," he said. "It affects how I do my cases."

But 1st Lt. Richard Perez, another Spanish-speaking officer in Fairfax, said the department as a whole appears to be getting the same level of cooperation as before. Perez attributes that in large part to outreach efforts at day laborers' gatherings, Latino churches and Latino business groups and in Spanish-language media.

After this month's verdict in Montgomery, the state's attorney asked Marybeth Ayres, one of the prosecutors in the case, whether Sam, the pivotal day laborer, was in the country legally.

"By the way, what's his status?" McCarthy asked.

"I don't know," she answered.

That, McCarthy said of such a helpful source, is just the point.