It Was The Worst Mass Murder In Arizona History. The Immense Search For The Killers Took Twists And Turns That Would Lead To False Confessions,Lawsuits and Internal Investigations;Influence Elections And Perhaps Cost A Woman's Life. A Key Cop Takes Us Inside The Case And Puts Forth His Opinions About What Went Wrong...

The first of three parts:

Sheriff's Sgt. Russ Kimball was coordinator of the multi-agency task force that conducted the massive search for the killers of nine people at the Buddhist temple. Writing with features editor Laura Greenburg, he relives the investigation.

Saturday, August 10, 1991

"911 emergency," responds a Maricopa County Sheriff's telephone operator, staring impatiently at a computer screen, fingers poised above the keys, ready. By habit, she notes the time, 11:09 a.m., Saturday, August 10,1991. By habit, she glances at the address the screen reveals for the incoming call, the Joseph a. Ledwidge residence.

Through her headset, the operator hears shrieks and screams in the background, although the woman caller controls herself. "Yes, emergency at the Buddhist temple..." The operator is brisk, she works for any useful information. She punches a button and a penetrating middle tone blasts patrol cars all over the county. All units are advised of unknown trouble, and deputies in the West Valley steak toward the temple address. The operator assures Mrs. Ledwidge police are on the way.

Suddenly, she has another person on the line. Chawee Borders, a temple member who ran the Ledwidge residence, grips the phone, barley able to contain he hysteria. Broken English tumbles from her mouth, the words are tortured, high-pitched.The operator fears this could be a bad practical joke.

"Hi,lady?" Chawee pleads for someone to understand."I'm got a membership in the temple. I come feed them lunch today."

"You can do what?" the operator asks.

"I come feed them lunch today,my monk." Her voice quivers and breaks. "They all die the same place."

The operator wants to know what happened. Chawee implores, "No, I don't know. Nobody answer. I see blood all over. Come see, please officer. Please! Now! Go see now."

The mercury prowls towards 113 degrees on another swampy August Saturday morning in the Valley. Russ Kimball is pulling into his parents' driveway in Glendale, obsessing on how to get the slice out of his golf game, when his imaginary swing is rudely interrupted by the shrill sound of his pager. He tightens up. It is his first weekend off in months, for Chrissakes, surely they're capable of handling a homicide without him...

But he's the only sergeant of the sheriff's homicide detail, supervising five detectives. Automatically he checks his watch-11:20 a.m.- when he walks into his parents' home. He dials, then slumps down on the piano bench after hearing the words nine dead at a west side Buddhist temple. A weekend off, yeah, right. He kisses his mother goodbye. She says,"But you just got here."

Swerving through traffic, the Ford LTD steers like a boat. This job is a monkey on his back. Sergeant Kimball has a cemetery of unsolved cases in his mind that he moves through when he's alone;the gravestones cry the names of unavenged victims. Sometimes he worries about working a murder case that really wasn't a murder, ending up hunting a phantom killer.

Sweating, he bolts into his Tempe home, hurries through a shower, irons a shirt, then slips into the requisite suit and switches to his county car while another worry nags him-that he'll be the last cop to the scene. He flies the I-17 stack, sucking on Copenhagen, hits I-10 west and flips on the flashing red and blue lights. His adrenaline kicks in as the car races at 105 mph to this temple he's never heard of,out in the boonies. Every time he pushes an AM button, he hears news flashes about dead bodies with updates promised.

He comes roaring up Cotton Lane at 1:13 p.m., and his eyes, trained for detail, snap pictures. Rubble and scorn in every direction. Click.The sky an empty vault.Click.Flat arid land.Click.Mountains and thick green crops. Click. Click. The rutted, narrow street is lined with cars on both sides and there are groups of Asians.Click. Choppers fly low over the temple. Kimball thinks it looks like Vietnam, circa 1970. Except he's thirty miles west of Phoenix in Waddell, Arizona, an unincorporated part of the county.Click.

Big news means the big brass are all here. Sheriff Tom Agnos, Captain Jerry White, and the public information officer, Duane Brady, are in animated conversation, pointing fingers and bowing their heads in the growing crowd of police and fire personnel. Kimball remains in his air-conditioned cocoon, absorbs the commotion, writes notes. It is his nature. There are rules, procedures for homicide. He does not force things. He likes to work slowly, carefully,methodically. Dead bodies don't go anywhere and neither does slipshod work.

He stares at the temple, a simple = white L-shaped building with red lettering on a sign. WAT PROMKUNRAM. Kimball feels its a faux oasis. Serenity amid chaos; calm where there's calamity. Crime scenes are labor-intensive.And, although he hasn't been inside yet, Kimball feels the stakes are rising with each new arrival. He deals with his bosses, then tells Patrick Riley, the detective he has assigned to the case,"We're not going to be pushed. we're going to take our time, because for years to come people are going to be second guessing us."

He doesn't realize how loudly he'll remember those words.

When his team is assembled, Riley leads, and they tape their way onto the temple property, stringing yellow crime tape so there is an orderly path that won't destroy evidence. a line of people is stalled at the door. Sheriff's brass. the county attorney's office. The medical examiner's office. A couple of people brought along by family or friends. Technicians... Kimball feels it's like being backed up at the entrance to a stadium; whenever someone at the lead takes a few steps, Kimball is swept in the moving crush in front of him, close enough to smell stale tobacco and someone's cheap aftershave.

Everyone is anxious to see the bodies.

Well, hell, why don't we have a damn party? Kimball is angry. Where are the rules? The procedures? It's unheard of to traipse people through a homicide scene until it's been thoroughly processed. But, this is becoming a circus attraction, everyone has to see, has to know. Kimball says nothing. But he understands now there will be nothing normal about this case.

Inside the main sanctuary, the worship area is a colliding world of smells of pungent incense and aromatic spices. In a concave area up front is an ornate altar, with a gold Buddha in the center. Colorful candelabra, statues,vases, and an evergreen tree with dollar bills pasted to the branches crowd the area.

When the group arrives at the door to the second room-the room containing the bodies-people stop in their tracks, clumped together, gawking and silent. Kimball's mind, gratefully , numbs the impact. He has seen hundreds of murder victims. Death by bullets. Death by strangulation. Death by stabbing. But this is a breath stopping scene of violence, the ceiling fan whipping tart smells together. He feels like time has ceased, that he is in a surreal Hollywood movie, not viewing the carnage really-it is so horrible he can't make any sense of it. So he snaps back to a strange sense of calm and what he knows: how he should organize.

Just inside the floor are three bodies-face down, hands raised slightly above their heads, clasped as though in prayer. A tech zooms in with a video camera. Everyone moves in silence. They turn a corner and there are six more bodies on the floor.To,Kimball,Anglo, ex-Catholic, they look eerily similar in the blur of floating orange robes against pools of blood that have dried to the color of chocolate. Face down, sienna skin, closely cropped hair... except one with raven, silky shoulder length hair. Male or female? He can't tell.

As detectives put on protective gear to go over the scene, absurd images dance in Kimball's mind: the air-popping flashes from ID techs' cameras sounding like gunfire; the county medical examiner, Dr. Heinz Karnitschnig, balancing among the bodies, pulling paper booties over his shoes. KImball wonders if he will topple over and crash.

There is work to be assigned. Bodies are marked using the alphabet. Rooms must be measured and sketched, and each item of evidence calibrated, photographed, cataloged, collected and bagged. Minute hairs, fibers fingerprints, shotgun pellets are to be gathered and labeled. Scraps of paper and their markings need to be noted.Each item, each wall, window, door, will be checked and dusted for latent fingerprints.

It will take six days before they are finished processing the temple. By then the bodies will be six human beings with names again; six Thai monks and three other temple workers-including a nun-killed helplessly as they lay on the floor by close range rifle bullets to the head, bodies sprayed with shotgun pellets. By then politics will be in high gear. But this afternoon, Kimball moves on automatic, only starting to comprehend what he's seeing and what it means-the enormity of the crime, its effect on a community.

Outside, deputies control street traffic, fire support personnel stand by, and a mobile command unit stocked with technical equipment and Gatorade keeps workers comfortable. Word comes that media is flying in from London and Bangkok. Agnos gives a press conference and comes off cool and professional. He is just back from open heart surgery. After today's scene, he asks for a cigarette. Three people fumble for their packs.

Cell phones are ringing, pagers are sounding off, people arrive with questions. Kimball handles it all. He directs and assigns incoming personnel, sends detectives to interview citizens calling with leads, fields questions from the brass. Plan, organize, plan. Toward the end of the day, they run out of body bags and have to send for more.

ON his way home at 4:15a.m.-fifteen hours after he arrived-Kimball's strained. He knows this case is different, there's a subtle undercurrent that is really a crocodile behind him, jawing him to move faster. Keep things rolling dammit solve the case now. He thinks of baseball caps that have circulated at his office: "Homicide:Our Day Begins When Yours Ends."

He doesn't realize the day beginning for him and his detectives will not end for nearly two years.

Monday, August 12, 1991

On the third day of the investigation, the hallway in the homicide unit of the sheriff's office is buzzing with suited detectives streaking back and forth hauling computer printouts and Styrofoam cups of bad coffee. There is an energy field surrounding the case that is hard-boiled, frantic,intense. Black humor and political pressure turn boys into men. The murders are already attracting nation and international attention.

Kimball had been out trying to supervise detectives at Wat Promkunaram's 3,200 square feet and show K.C. Scull-head of major felony for the county attorney office-through the crime scene, when he was beeped.Pagers keep detectives on short leashes. It was Captain Jerry White,telling Kimball to return immediately to headquarters.

Kimball was annoyed by the beep. He already had been at the headquarters that morning, already had been told to have the shell casings rushed to the lab-the casings went without being properly packaged,he felt, a hurry up job that could effect evidence.There is nothing normal about this case.

He scorched back on the noon interstate, making the thirty minute drive downtown in twenty minutes, to find White wearing the tiles thin in front of the homicide unit. He turned to Kimball and announced:"We're out of the dope business."

Kimball didn't understand. White was a longtime sheriff's narcotics enforcement czar who had been given control of all specialized investigations in late May 1991.

>B>What does he mean, out of the dope business? The stress around the office had Kimball's secretary close to tears. Fax machines spewed paper, cigarette smoke stroked the air until there was cloud cover, the clacking of printers drifted into the hallway.

White, a tough, six-foot, three-inch, 240-pound veteran of twenty years, a man comfortable in jeans and boots on his days off, stood with his hands on his hips.Everything about us clashes, Kimball thought, staring back at him. Kimball, cut from a diploma and tony tastes, felt the captain considered him a yuppie.

White crooked his finger and informed Kimball that the sheriff had ordered a task force organized to investigate the temple homicides."I need you to put it together, right now. You'll have all my narcs. The entire division is working this case as of this minute... You'll have TOU [Tactical Operations Unit, the sheriff's SWAT team]."

Kimball pleaded, "Captain, why do we need a task force? I think..."White interrupted. "Because the Sheriff says so...'

As Kimball sulked to his desk, he felt like a bomb had been dropped in his lap. Dammit, he thought, they were still working on identifying the victims...now the brass was accelerating an already breakneck pace. To Kimball,fast was synonymous with mistakes.

He had seen multi-agency task forces operate; they could take on a huge life of their own. Just sustaining them could become the goal as political in-fighting over money, power and the spotlight sapped life from investigations.

Picking through a stack of papers, he silently cursed the sheriff for what looked to him like an obviously knee-jerk political decision. Then he began roughing out an organizational chart on graph paper.

Except for White's name in the commander's slot-Kimball would be the coordinator-the neat template of boxes for functional work groups was empty. It was anybody's guess who would be picked.

Kimball was distracted a undercover detectives from the narcotics unit, by necessity a scruffy bunch of look-alike dope dealers, began to trickle in seeming confused. They were just told, "Report to Sgt. Russ Kimball."Out of the dope business. So he asked them to pass the word. The task force would hold its first meeting in the sheriff's conference room at 3p.m.Then he telephoned White. "What should we call this thing?" The captain answered, "Call it the Maricopa County Major Crimes Task Force, per Sheriff Agnos."

Before the task force is done, they will interview 1,857 individuals including people from two entire telephone prefixes in west Phoenix who had made a call to Tucson before and after the temple homicides. At one point there are 226 people, running 24-hours a day(mostly clerical assistance), on the task force.

August 13-August 31, 1991

With the task force decision, a chaotic manpower shift swirls through the sheriff's office. Objections of commanders not involved with the Temple murders are set aside by the sheriff and his support staff. Patrol deputies will be yanked from already understaffed substations and assigned to the basement to answer non-stop ringing hotline phones for temple case tips, before deputies know where to funnel information. Narcotics enforcement, vice and intelligence are virtually shut down. Bet the people on the streets would like to know that, Kimball thinks. Out of the dope business. Several major cases nearing success are put on hold, including a two-year narcotics conspiracy investigation. The spigot of RICO monies, including the sheriff's aviation program among others, will drizzle then dry up. Surplus funds are diverted to the task force. Other murders are turned over to less experienced general crimes detectives.The entire homicide unit, except for one experienced detective on vacation at the time, is assigned to the task force.

At 3p.m., a potpourri of law enforcement officers from numerous agencies gather in the sheriff's conference room for briefing and assignments. Kimball inserts names, mostly by intuition. How can he know capabilities when he hasn't even spoken to the people around him? The boxes on the chart fill up.

Kimball, feeling in control, has participants sign a log and he tape records the session. There are rules, procedures for investigating homicides, steps to maintain the integrity of the of information.

When the large meeting dissolves into smaller designated groups with big names, White wants action, and gets it. By six p.m., teams are in the field checking leads, interviewing temple members, trying to gather information about the habits of the victims. A special projects team canvasses a two-mile area around the temple; intelligence and research check criminal histories, review teletypes from around the world, run license plates, pawn shop information... searching for any clues. An information dissemination squad is busy alerting other agencies. It is routine homicide procedure. For the last two days, detectives working 'round the clock have been pouring over the temple, identifying victims and watching autopsies.

The public information officer, Duane Brady, is staggering under a fusillade of media requests for information, and trying to set up a reward fund, ignoring 150 telephone messages that piled up over the weekend.

An international liaison team sends queries to Thailand, opening communications, trying to contact relatives of victims, looking for passport information on the monks who traveled extensively. The command staff huddles, finagling more copy machines, overtime money, and political okay from agency heads for the task force. The county surrenders the recently vacated fourth floor of the East Courts Building as task force headquarters.

Technicians and laborers race to insert phone lines. Brand new computers,still in boxes arrive. Crates of cell phones show up. Every available typewriter, telephone, chair,desk and pencil is acquisitioned for the new task force...

Soon, what is thought to be the first significant early lead peters out before the excitement of its impact wanes. To Kimball, it's also an early indication of problems in trying to coordinate a large group.

A food store in the east Valley reports ],"D,!, of $500 in fifty-dollar bills that are stamped with tiny red and marked with cryptic numbers and symbols. The task force jumps, thinking this may be the donation money stolen from the temple.

A detective to the store seizes the money, leaves a receipt and returns to headquarters. Other detectives trace the of the bills to a man in the west Valley who exchanged the cash for a money order. They question him at and the story is vague; he claims he got the bills from his bank then went to the store for a money order.

Back at headquarters the money is examined by an expert from the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service(INS) and a consultant interpreter from Washington, who confirm the aren't Thai. They also verify the money is marked in a way with protection money from Asian rackets. Task force interest declines.

But the money vanishes. It was seen once more on the task force floor but disappears without a trace. A concerned Jerry White would later send detectives scouring through every evidence package-some 2000-looking for the missing bills, but they're never found. Some think the money was accidently shredded along with piles of task force flotsam. Some wonder if it was stolen...

A burn-out rhythm sets the work ethic. The first night, the teams work ' dawn, then sleep for two hours before gathering again in the conference room on Tuesday morning. More briefing and debriefing. Bloodshot eyes and oily skin shoe strain and sleeplessness. Tempers explode when the morning news paper is laid open on the table. Dr. is quoted as the source of information investigators wanted kept secret...how the bodies lay, the caliber of the weapons... Kimball feels he has broken the rules.

When arrives for the meeting, he's meet with cold stares and a pounding silence. lectures about his forensic findings, but many officers refuse to even look at him.Kimball sips tepid coffee and clenches his teeth.

The momentum continues to build. The FBI lends two agents, the DEA follows suit. Their global are tweaked and primed. From Los Angeles, INS sends the Thai interpreter. The Consulting firm,contacted by the state department on behalf of the task force, also sends one from Washington.Phoenix police lend three officers; one an Asian gangs specialist. The state Department of Public Safety (DPS) is in from the beginning. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Scottsdale police, Tucson police and the Pima County sheriff's office will come in later. The county attorney office serves as adviser.

Soon, the Maricopa County Major Crimes Task Force is a separate, unified police force, involving ten agencies, swelling to fifty-six investigators, larger than ninety percent of the sheriff's offices around the country. But its an infant and lacks the tuned reflexes of a full grown organization.

From the beginning, wild rumors circulate about the case. Scuttlebutt about sexual affairs; gossip that the temple could have been a distribution center for China White heroin; rumors that tons of gold was squrriled away in the temple; more rumors that the monks were somehow partially culpable for their own deaths.

None of it will check out.

But everyone has a theory, an opinion. There is speculation that the murders were a hate-crime, a race-crime; others concoct a jealous husband(who would have needed an accomplice.)Or perhaps they were slain by Asian gangsters...Some hold that the slaughter was the result of a basic, insane,American robbery...Many believe the answers lie in Southeast Asia.

The task force will scrutinize each hypothesis. Actually it is Captain White who on Tuesday has the most prophetic flash, based on the weapons. The .22 caliber murder weapon is identified as a rifle manufactured by Marlin. The non-lethal shotgun wounds were inflicted by a 20-gauge."Farm boys did this," White tells Kimball, after hearing the preliminary results from the DPS lab. "These are exactly the kinds of guns farm boys keep in the corners of their bedrooms."

The kind kept by boys in the rough, semi-rural area surrounding the temple? Whites initial theory will prove to be on the right track when two young men are convicted two years later.

But now there is still nothing tangible to go on. Except nine people are still dead.

Task force members know their hunting for at least two killers and two weapons that were fired. Glove prints and latent fabric impressions are found in critical areas of the temple,so it's suspected the killers wore gloves.The number of cameras and stereos found in the temple doesn't jibe with the number of empty boxes,so it's a good bet these quick-sale items were stolen. But no one knows for sure.

An overcoat of secrecy is cinched tight around the task force. Media are ravenous, but commanders feed reporters a starvation diet. Agnos metes this out in one or two tightly controlled press conferences in the first week. Most of the real story is kept from the public.

From August 11,1991 through October 22,1991 The Arizona Republic will print seventy-four stories; The Phoenix Gazette sixty; the Mesa Tribune forty-three and regional newspapers 169 accounts of the crime and its aftermath. The task force does expect the press to broadcast leads and reward fund information. It complies, but when no one from the sheriff's or county attorney's offices offers any new information,reporters turn to other sources for juicier tidbits.

The result is third-hand opinion howling from newspapers and TV sets around the world. From Washington,President Bush sends his condolences to the Thai people. In Bangkok, there are street disturbances by Thais believing the murders were a hate-crime. Local politicians jump on the bandwagon with public appearances and quotes of shock and outrage.

One hundred thousand dollars of state money is funneled to pay mushrooming task force overtime costs. Investigators storm the Thai community. They haunt Thai restaurants where some temple members gather to grieve and sort out their tragedy.Asian gang members are rousted,twisted for information.

Anyone close to the monks and temple becomes a potential suspect. Kimball notes that White considers the jilted husband theory worthy-Kimball thinks it would be the first mass murder committed in history by a jealous husband and a friend. But stranger things have happened.

Detectives delve into the sex lives of female temple members, especially those volunteering their time to cook and clean for the monks.

Temple telephone records are pulled. There's a volume of long distance calls made, many international, which spikes interest because it buttresses the dope theory for Arizona investigators struggling to understand the ebb and flow of a different culture. Especially calls to drug capitals like Florida, Las Vegas, Thailand and South America. For some, the calls add meaning to a cryptic handwritten note found in the temple. According to the note, the unidentified bearer was to travel to California, dial a phone number and ask for "M.Morn."

A final line in Thai, translates, "Already weighed, approximately 1,083 lbs." Some task force members think the final sentence refers to what U.S. Customs officials claim is the largest heroin seizure in United States history: 1,080 pounds of China White followed from a boat in Oakland harbor to a warehouse, two months prior to the murders at Wat Promkunaram. Agents believe the shipment originated in Thailand.

The telephone number in the note is in Placentia, California, listed to man named Phet. The note becomes known as "The Phet note." Phet's house is watched, his phone line traced. But nothing links to the heroin shipment or the temple. Finally, investigators contact Phet-and M. Morn, who lives with him. Turns out the 1,083 pounds mentioned in the note refers to tin cans.

Scratching for extra money, the monks collected them and shipped them to California where higher prices were paid for aluminum.A local "can man" confirms he periodically collected cans from the temple and drove them to Placentia.

Still, passport information, research of temple phone calls, and investigations elsewhere of members of other temples, continue to warm the suspicions of drug theorists.

Kimball isn't putting much stock in these inferences. He has summoned FBI profiles from Quantico, Virginia,the ones made famous by Silence of the Lambs. With a little luck, the data fed to VICAP-the FBI's computerized violent crimes analysis-might trigger a computer "hit" of similar homicides occurring somewhere else. A long shot.

Two top agents arrive Wednesday, August 14. They visit the crime scene, review the homicide videos and are given a complete set of scene photographs:forty-two rolls of film. They woodshed with Kimball and based on evidence at the temple, advance preliminary visions of a more mature, knowledgeable criminal accompanied by a more juvenile follower.Execution-style killing, wearing gloves and cutting phone lines are indications of sophisticated criminal behavior; ransacking, carving "Bloods" in the wall and playing with a fire extinguisher indicate juvenile behavior.

In these first, early days after the crime, the killers may be vulnerable to psychological warfare. The agents suggest a precisely timed proactive media campaign: releasing information to the press that will appear for public consumption but is actually designed to drive a wedge between the killers. Kimball is unable to get approval of the plan as fast as he wants it-by the time the press releases go out, he feels they are useless.

Simultaneously, the task force is on a scavenger hunt. Kimball and Sgt. j. Mark Mullavey, who years ago were partners, nicknamed Kibbles and Bits, decide to play a long shot-the guns.

They tell detectives to acquire 20-gauge shotguns and .22-caliber rifles manufactured by Marlin from as many sources as possible. They're to be systematically tested, compared to the fatal bullets and shell casings. Investigators scour gun stores, pawnshops and police property rooms throughout the county.

The identification of the weapons is a closely sealed secret within the task force, and the process feels endless. But the sergeants know the guns are somewhere. They believe in the old police acronym "GOYAAKOD: "Get off your ass and knock on doors." Dozens of rifles begin steaming into the sheriff's evidence section and DPS.

By the end of the week pressure mounts to release the temple. Funerals must be held,temple members must be allowed the proper forum for their grief. The sheriff's administration begins leaning on Kimball to wrap up the crime scene. They can't imagine his detectives haven't found what they're going to in five days. But it takes days to sift through six bedrooms and living quarters and decide what is to be evidence and what isn't.

Kimball orders Detective Riley to hustle, and of course Riley objects, to no effect. So he finishes before he's ready, but not before he saws out an entire wall in which the word "Bloods" is carved, and has the carpet removed from the rooms where the victims died.The temple is surrendered in time for the funerals to begin over the weekend.

Undercover detectives are dispatched to the week-long ceremonies. They snap pictures, roll miles of video. Kimball and Mullavey hope the film will capture suspects returning to the scene of the crime. A time-honored cliche.

Much later, one of those convicted in the slaughter will be spotted on the films, wandering amid the mourners at the temple.But his face means nothing to Kimball and Mullavey in August 1991.

In that first week, Kimball puts in 107 hours, an average of fifteen a day. Many of his detectives work similar schedules.It doesn't stop there. There are no weekends. Vacations and leaves are canceled. A baby is born, but the father must rase from the task force to the hospital, then back to the task force.

With the hot line cooking, leads arrive at the rate of twenty per day into late August.A woman says her ex-husband is acting weird; a man at a bar overhears someone say something about killing the monks... Another person saw a red bronco around the temple the morning the bodies were found. So the task force chases Broncos. Then someone else noticed a white van on the street near the temple in the middle of the night. The task force chases white vans.

Psychics call from Arizona, California, New Mexico, even Canada. Kimball talks with them all. He listens and writes they're intuitions. Hey,why not? Nothing else is working. Oddly a common thread meanders through their ramblings: The murders were committed by young males; a hispanic and an Asian, possibly others.

The information is filed away in stacks of paper. Documents are scattered everywhere. A problem. Policemen, from the time they're puppies in training, are taught to document. But procedures vary agency to agency, Some cops , like the sheriff's homicide detectives, write down everything they do. Others document only what they decide is important. Consistency of information suffers on a task force. Evidence being dragged in by members is heaped on Riley's desk.

As August fades, so do promising leads. Tips slow to 15 per day then dwindle to 5. Kimball pushes Duane Brady to come up with some media strategies to bolster public interest. The reward fund supposed to contain $75,000 promised by the private sector actually holds $10,000... When Kimball's frustration shows, he's told to back off. Brady's not a cop. Now the air Force's Office of Special Investigations(OSI) offers men and equipment to the task force. Luke Air Force Base is a vast community nearby, but Kimball is skeptical,doesn't consider them real policemen. He drags his feet bringing them in. He has enough troubles already. He doesn't know they will be the true heroes of the temple murder case.

The agents will scour Air Force records for the names of servicemen who have Asian dependents, or those who served in Southeast Asia. They'll interview airmen and dependents for knowledge of the temple.

The task force swells to sixty policemen. By being baptized into the group, OSI becomes part of the secret inner sanctum. Kimball confides to OSI agents that the weapons they're seeking including a 20 gauge shotgun and a Marlin .22 semi-automatic rifle-information the brass will not allow even sheriff's field deputies to have.

OSI establishes its own mini-task force at Luke, then agents play some longshots of they're own. They rummage Air Force security police reports of incidents occurring on and around the base, just before and after the murders...

August-September 1991

Meanwhile, Arizona Republic reporter Paul Brinkley-Rogers has some questions. He's pursuing information that developed while covering the funerals in Thailand for his paper. He doesn't know the task force has been down similar avenues with DEA and FBI attaches in the U.S. and overseas. In late August, DEA agents assigned to the task force call Kimball to a conference with Brinkley-Rogers at DEA's uptown Phoenix headquarters. It will be the fist of several meetings between the reporter and Kimball.

When he interviewed the families of the victims, Brinkley-Rogers says the Thai Internal Security Command followed up. They confiscated photographs of the Arizona monks doing things the government of Thailand considered disrespectful of their religion. Things like posing in ski outfits or allowing themselves to be photographed with rough-looking Westerners and American military personnel. The Internal Security Command even zeroed in on a letter one of the monks had written to his family while flying to America, in which he described the female flight attendants on his plane as "pretty." Prettier than Thai women.

Brinkley-Rogers curiosity was piqued. He made inquiries with sources he'd developed over the years-he had been a correspondent during the Vietnam conflict. He tells Kimball he learned that forty-four other Thai temples and their monks around the globe-mostly in Thailand-were under investigation by Thai police on a variety of suspicions; including selling worthless amulets and trinkets as expensive venerated objects and diverting funds to buy expensive cars.

Brinkley-Rogers also notes to Kimball that two of Wat Promkunaram's monks were born in the province of Chiang Mai, the heroin production capital of the planet and dominion of the notorious heroin kingpin,Khun sa. He wonders if there is a link between heroin trafficking and the temple murders...

After he returned, Brinkley-Rogers says, he visited San Francisco, were a DEA source confided information about the 1,080 pound shipment of China White heroin, seized June 20,1991, at the wherehouse near Oakland. The source hinted that the temple task force had made inquiries.

Kimball shook his head, remembering the "Phet note" and the tin can incident.

Back in Arizona, Brinkley-Rogers found that a relative of Khun sa may have attended Arizona State University. Kimball learns he also ferreted out information about another heroin shipment seized out of Los Angeles-drugs from Asia reportedly en route to a California temple. Brinkley-Rogers noted a flurry of DEA activity in Phoenix that could signal something big was cooking, but his DEA source wouldn't talk about it.

He wondered, could it be tied to the temple murders?

As Brinkley-Rogers recapped his information, a look of shock froze Kimball's face.His cops inbred mistrust of reporters kicked into high gear. Damn the investigation leaked classified information like a sieve.

Kimball wondered to himself if anybody had ratted about dope-sniffing dogs being run through the temple under the cover of darkness the fourth night of the investigation.

The story doesn't appear.

Still Kimball, who had virtually dismissed a drug link, is now troubled. By the second week of September, the task force is in the doldrums. As lead after lead falls dead, the one that keeps twitching is the dope theory. Kimball begins to consider that narcotics are somehow involved. Late nights he spends sifting through phone link charts and pouring over narcotics intelligence reports from around the world,finding troubling coincidence. His mind makes leaps: In March,two men were arrested in Hong Kong for allegedly attempting to smuggle heroin into the U.S. in statues of Buddha. The heroin originated in Thailand. DEA claimed the smugglers intended the statues to be carried into the states by monks headed for Buddhist Lenten celebrations at certain temples around the country.

The statues probably wouldn't be checked by customs agents, who would waive the clerics through points of entry. The Buddhist Lent began on July 28. Kimball remembered Wat Promkunaram still being decked out for celebrations when the murders occurred. He also remembered twelve or fifteen statues of Buddha neatly lined up on a shelf in a closet in the temple. Task force investigators were told that Pairuch Kanthong, the head monk, had traveled to Thailand in April to visit his family. When he returned, he reportedly brought back statues to be handed out to worthy temple members.

By the morning of September 10, Kimball toys with the array of data circumstantially tugging the investigation towards drugs. The dope dogs had unaccountably reacted in the sanctuary and the monk's bedroom-though investigators could find no reason... Repeated phone calls from the temple to drug trafficking areas... The heroin shipment and the "Phet note"... Pairuch's statues-statues in the temple were checked, nothing was found... Chiang Mai and Khun Sa and the birthplace of two monks...

But despite investigators' best efforts, there is no evidence the temple was ever involved in drugs...Kimball needs a break. By 4 p.m. he's in Glendale at his mother's seventy-sixth birthday bash, the first real time he's had off since August 10.

There are 4.2 million words recorded on the temple murder case investigation contained in 36,000 pages, in 72 hard-bound books. There are more than 60,000 bits of telephone information in a computer system to do link charts. Seven computer programs to track and account for information are developed. There were 700 photographs taken, 2,100 items of evidence, from guns to tennis shoes to tapes. There were 300,000 latent fingerprint examinations involving approximately twenty-one potential suspects.

September 10-11, 1991

While Kimball was making toasts to his mother in Glendale, the task force would follow two leads that would forever alter the investigation.

OSI agents had discovered a report on a Marlin rifle and thought the task force would be interested. Mullavey sent detective Rick Sinsabaugh out to the west Valley to find the gun.

The agents, digging through old Luke records, had come across a report by a security officer who stopped Rolando Carachea and friends on base August 20 and August 21. The young man had a .22 caliber Marlin in his car-a sheriff's deputy was called on the second day to determine if it was a concealed weapon.

The deputy said it was not concealed, and with the task force secrecy on the murder weapons, the officers did not know that the rifle could be significant. It was released.

Retrieving the Marlin was lead number 510.

Lead 511 on September 10 took two task force members- DPS officer Larry Troutt and sheriff's detective Don Griffiths-down to Tucson to interview a tipster calling himself "John" who wanted to snitch on "Kelsey Lawrence"- both were really Mike McGraw, whose current residence was the Tucson Psychiatric Institute.

McGraw talked a blue streak, he yammered, but it was all a dead end until Griffiths left the room to phone Mullavey and the discussion took a radically different turn. Troutt says McGraw invited him into his bedroom, closed the door, then quizzed Trout-something about was there blood on the walls?

It was snot tape recorded. Years later the exact words remain in dispute. But everyone involved in the case was so eager to catch the killers that it sounded like a direct hit...

Suddenly it was hold the phones. The word "bloods"was carved on the temple wall and, like the rifle, that information had not leaked out. It was the code detectives lived by-uncommon knowledge. Troutt called Mullavey who called Kimball at 1020 p.m. and gave him a party. "Do you want your killer?"

"Yeah, how do you know?"

"Because he knew about the word "Bloods" being on the wall."

Kimball is at headquarters by midnight, and in a politically correct move, calls key task force members. It just wouldn't look good for the sheriff's department to steal the show. At 12:20a.m. detective Sinsabaugh straggles in with the Marlin rifle, surprised to see the place alive in the middle of the night.

I've got the murder weapon, right here," Sinsabaugh banters.He missed his night school class, and even chatted with Caratchea and another young man, Johnathan Doody. Asked for their help...But Kimball, awaiting McGraw's arrival with the investigators, has other things on his mind.

"Rick,..The killers are coming up here, one of the guys involved is coming..." The rifle is routed to property to be checked out.

But property is locked at that time of night. The rifle ends up stored behind the door in Riley's office, where it will sit for nearly a month.

In October 1991, a fifty-year-old woman is murdered at a campground near Phoenix. Kimball will say two years later that the choices he made the night of September 10 and 11 may have cost her life.

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