The Ultimate Question: Will End of Interview Be End of Interviewer?

If there were ever a person whom a reporter didn’t want to misquote it was Blake Tek Yoon.

A self-confessed hit man is not the kind of guy you want to get mad. In fact, he’s not the kind of guy you want get near, let alone chat with.

So when I went to interview him at the Orange County Jail, where he was being held on an attempted murder charge, it was with great apprehension.

I saw Yoon after an elaborate press conference held by local and federal law enforcement officials who alleged that he and two partners lured an ex-Marine to a secluded Irvine parking lot, beat him with baseball bats, shot him in the back in the head and left him for dead.

According to officials, Yoon, the alleged triggerman, was paid to do the hit by a reputed mobster from Las Vegas who has ties to the East Coast Genovese crime family.

The mobster apparently ordered the killing as a $50,000 favor for a Tustin businessman who wanted to eliminate his secretary’s boyfriend so he could pursue his own romantic interests in her.

In short, it was a sordid tale of lust, organized crime and violence.

Like all reporters, I wanted to get the other side of the story after hearing the cops’ version.

That’s what led me to Yoon. Reporters often try to talk to crime suspects, hoping to get whatever nuggets of information the accused is willing to reveal. Sometimes you get a great story; more often you’re told to get lost or worse.

In Yoon’s case, I wasn’t expecting much. His two alleged partners had just refused to be interviewed by a colleague and me.

When I entered the small visiting room, Yoon, dressed in a gold-colored, jail-issued jumpsuit, was alone. I could feel his stare right through the thick protective glass.

We both grabbed telephones hanging on the side of the visiting booth. I introduced myself and told him the paper was planning on doing a story.

“Do you want to say anything about the charges against you?” I asked.

He smiled and didn’t utter a word.

He just stared at me with his dark eyes.

After an awkward moment, at least for me, he asked me how old I was. “Twenty-seven,” I said, a year older than he.

He said he wasn’t sure that he wanted to talk to me right then, but that when he did he would have a lot to say. Maybe it would be great Mafia book or a movie, he said.

Then he asked me about my own background. Where was I born? When did I get into reporting? Finally, he told me a little about himself. He said he just got married and his wife didn’t really know exactly why he was in jail. Out of a brown file folder, he took out pictures of his bride and their honeymoon in Cancun.

After awhile, he started telling me about his criminal past. Then, he opened up about the night of the shooting, admitting his involvement.

He smiled when I referred to him and his partners as a “hit team.” “It’s a crew, not a team, “ he laughed.

As the interview proceeded, Yoon said several times, “Don’t print that. I don’t want to see that in the paper.”

At that point, I became a little worried.

I started wondering to myself what would happen if he read something that he had been willing to say during the interview, but regretted when he saw it in print? What if we had a misunderstanding about what was on the record and what was off? What if he got out of jail and wanted to teach me a lesson about journalism?

It didn’t help much that Yoon talked so matter-of-factly about the shooting. He didn’t seem to have any qualms about it. He just thought the motive for the hit was “an embarrassment.”

Yoon said he wouldn’t have attempted the contract if he knew the reason was to make it easier for some businessman to have an affair.

“We thought this (ex-Marine) was some wiseguy (mob figure) from Ohio. That’s what we were told,” he said.

At the end of the interview, he told me that by talking with me and cooperating with the police he was burning his bridges. “I don’t know how all of this will turn out,” he said.

The next day, I got a collect call from Yoon. He said he had seen the article in jail.

My heart rate was beginning to skyrocket when he said that he thought the article was fine. He did say he was a little upset about his photograph, which had been released by authorities during the press conference and ran with the story.

It showed him with a beard. “I haven’t had a beard in years,” he complained. “Where did they get that?”

Yoon, who has subsequently pleaded guilty, is in federal custody in Los Angeles waiting to testify against other defendants in the case.

It could be an interesting story.