Firing of Officer Could Hurt Prosecution in Kidnapping Trial

The dismissal of a rookie San Marino police officer may hurt prosecutors’ efforts to convict four men charged with kidnapping a 3-year-old boy and trying to extort $1.5 million for his safe return.

And what exactly threatens the prosecution’s case? Thirty minutes. San Marino Police Officer John Crook was fired by his police chief after allegations that he falsified a time card by 30 minutes.

That termination would have sparked little interest, except that he claims to have heard one of the alleged kidnappers confess to a role in the abduction. Defense attorneys plan to ask, quite simply, if Crook’s testimony can be trusted.

“If you’re challenging the guy who took the confession, the best person to call him a liar is his boss,” said Crook, who maintains he told the truth about the confession and about the time card.

The possible effect of the 30 disputed minutes is the latest turn in a high-profile crime distinguished by strange twists. It has included, among other things, the disappearance of some ransom money--even though the kidnappers never got their hands on it.

The most unthinkable of nightmares for a parent started last year on March 20, when two men broke into the stately home of a wealthy couple, tied up the nanny and sped away with the toddler.

Within hours, a caller would demand that Ernest Chan’s parents pay $1.5 million for his return alive. In recent years, this terrifying form of extortion, more common in Taiwan, has occurred with increasing frequency in Southern California’s Asian community.

Asian parents, authorities say, are extremely hesitant to involve law enforcement, and many choose to pay the ransom. However, in this case, Stephen Chan and Maria Cheung, went to San Marino police and the FBI.

For the agency, it was a rare chance to demonstrate to that community that it can rescue the victim and catch the abductors. The FBI was prepared to prove its worth, deploying helicopters, sophisticated wiretaps and SWAT teams.

After two nail-biting weeks, a SWAT team rescued the boy from a bare-bones apartment on Los Angeles’ Duarte Street and snared a makeshift gang led allegedly by a businessman whose wife had worked at Chan’s Los Angeles garment business.

That man, Kei Chang, 31, along with Paul Thim, 17; Johnny Lung Ly, 24; and Sokkha Khy, 20, are scheduled for trial Feb. 26. All have pleaded not guilty to seven felony counts, including kidnapping for ransom, which carries a possible life sentence. Thim is being tried as an adult.

Prosecutors say they fear that a mini-trial over Crook’s credibility could undermine the case against, not only Thim, who allegedly confessed to Crook, but against the three other defendants s well.

“The bad point of this situation is there could be some spillover effect,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Marian M.J. Thompson. “So we don’t taint the jury, I’m going to ask for a separate jury on Paul Thim.” All the defendants are being held on $1 million bail.

FBI agents told a grand jury that indicted the four men and three others last June that Paul “Shorty” Thim was a foot soldier in the extortion plot hatched by Chang.

Chang, an immigrant from Macao, has an MBA from Cal State Fullerton and brings in overseas workers for manufacturers. He recruited Thom “Moon” Huynh, 28, of Alhambra, to make the ransom demand calls, agents testified. They said Huynh then hired Ly, Khy and Thim to carry out the crime.

Authorities say Ly, a member of the Oriental Boyz gang, sent Khy and Thim into the Raleigh Drive home March 20, where they found the boy alone with his nanny, who had just finished bathing the child.

Thim grabbed the child and corralled the nanny with a pair of scissors, agents testified. She was tied up with a white and green lamp cord and caged in an upside-down crib. Carrying the toddler, Thim and Khy fled in a Black Acura Integra driven by Ly.

Shortly afterward, Huynh called the toddler’s parents, demanding the ransom in used $100 bills. The parents, who lived in manicured San Marino, a community of 11,000 where the average home costs $650,000, immediately went to San Marino police. The 26-officer department brought in the FBI.

Ransom Payment Intercepted

After a week, the kidnappers told the couple to pack the ransom into two suitcases and drop it into a dumpster outside the Hong Kong Market in Rowland Heights.

But the kidnappers never showed up. Instead, mall security guards grabbed the loot. When they returned it to sheriff’s deputies $100,000 was missing, prosecutor Thompson said.

“The FBI investigated and arrested several guards and they admitted to taking the money,” Thompson said. The cash was returned and no one was prosecuted.

Meanwhile, one small Chinese-language newspaper revealed the abduction, which other news organizations had agreed to not publicize because it could endanger the child’s life.

After 14 days of aborted payoffs, a call to the toddler’s parents at the Hai Fu restaurant in Monterey Park was traced to an Echo Park public phone, where agents arrested Huynh. He has struck a plea bargain, prosecutors say.

A review of Huynh’s cellular phone records led agents to Ly and Chang because, after each ransom call, he called them.

On April 3, an FBI special weapons team raided Ly’s apartment and discovered him, Thim and Khy--as well as the toddler’s disposable diapers in the trash, officials say. During questioning, Khy reportedly revealed that his sister and mother had been paid $1,000 to look after the boy at a Los Angeles apartment.

Within a few hours, another SWAT team burst into that apartment and found the two women with Ernest, who was somewhat disheveled, but otherwise unharmed.

The suspects were taken to San Marino police headquarters, where Crook was working dispatch. Crook told the grand jury that as Thim waited to be jailed, he struck up a conversation. Crook testified that Thim volunteered that “he was one of the people that went into the house and took the kid.” In an interview Thursday, Crook said, “The kid started the conversation. He just flat-out confessed.”

Terrence Bennett, Thim’s attorney, said the story defies logic. “My guy refused to waive his Miranda rights and give information to the FBI, and yet he is sitting with this officer and suddenly pipes up with this incriminating statement to this officer?”

Bennett said he plans to discredit Crook as a liar. Of the case overall, he said, “There is a certain Keystone Kops element to this thing.”

Three months after the grand jury indicted the men, in part because of Crook’s testimony, the officer’s word was questioned by his own superiors.

Crook said that conflict coincided with his participation as a negotiator for the San Marino Police Officers Assn. in tough contract talks. Crook said he helped write a survey the association mailed to residents that irked city management. “If they fired me, they knew it would quiet down the association,” he said.

On Sept. 14, Crook said in the interview, he arrived at the station around 7:30 a.m. for a film shoot patrol along with his daughter. He said he had an arrangement to drop his daughter at her school, but no patrol cars were available, so they rode with another officer. After dropping her off, he helped that officer set up a speed radar trailer before going to the film shoot about 8. Crook said he filled in an overtime slip for the day, stating he started work at 7:30.

A few days later, a supervisor questioned the slip and told him he needed to change the start time. Crook said he was certain that he had started earlier but, as a compromise, “I put 7:40 a.m. The next thing I knew, the department was accusing me of falsifying a document.”

Later, Crook said he learned his bosses claimed that he started work at 8 when he viewed his personnel file.

Initially, Crook said, he was placed on paid leave but on Sept. 25 he was called into San Marino Police Chief Arl Farris’ office and dismissed. Crook said that during the meeting he reminded the chief that he was a witness in the kidnapping case and another crime, but that “nobody cared.”

Fired Officer Threatens Legal Action

Crook, who now works part time driving a beer truck, said he plans legal action because he had been an officer for 21 months and was not a probationary employee who could be fired at will.

Farris countered that Crook was indeed a probationary employee and that such employees can be dismissed for failing to meet probation standards. The chief said legal protections for employees prevent him from revealing further details.

The chief said Crook’s dismissal won’t affect the criminal case’s outcome. “It’s hard to say what a jury will do. We all remember the O.J. Simpson trial,” he said. “The bottom line is, the city has a strong case here.”

Farris has been ordered by the Los Angeles Superior Court judge presiding over the case to be available to testify. That jurist, Judge Lance A. Ito of the O.J. Simpson case, knows what strange twists a trial can take.