- 2 days ago
After a successful Korean-American business owner is killed during a home invasion, detectives believe his murder could be tied to a string of Philly crimes against businesses, until they uncover that the mastermind is someone much closer to home.
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00:11When you think of life in the suburbs, and you look at those big, beautiful houses, you think nothing bad
00:16can happen.
00:20Of course, until it does.
00:23To open up your own business, that's the American dream from a Korean perspective.
00:28Robert Chee's murder was kind of a crack in that dream.
00:30All he did was work.
00:32He did everything, you know, for his family.
00:36The entire Asian American community was on edge.
00:40There was a tremendous amount of fear.
00:44This is an all-hands-on-deck.
00:46We're going to get these guys.
00:49The thing about it that was so bizarre was that brutality.
00:53It looked like almost an entire roll of duct tape had been used.
00:57This is about one of the worst ways you can die.
01:00Because of the danger of the community, we needed to identify who these people were so that we could take
01:05them off the street.
01:07I don't think people realize how much deeper it really went.
01:11He's literally in the car with a co-conspirator to his father's murder.
01:15Now we have to go into the family's inner circle and really deliver a bomb.
01:45Philly's a city built on the American dream.
01:48Immigrants coming here for generations, working hard, building better lives.
01:54But in 2009, for one family, a dream turned into a nightmare.
02:03At the time, I was a detective in Ben Salem, not far from where this homicide happened.
02:08And across Philly, we were seeing a spree of attacks on the Asian community.
02:12But the brutality of this crime set it apart.
02:16And the truth behind it would stun us all.
02:28It was January 9, 2009, just before 6 a.m.
02:32And that particular morning, I was already out and about.
02:37I was in my office, and I received a telephone call from my boss, who said you need to go
02:43to 139 Gwynnmont Drive in the North Wales section of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
02:49He told me that 911 received a telephone call from a woman who reported that her house had been robbed.
02:57The woman on the line is Janice Che, and she's calling from her neighbor's home.
03:05She tells police that she and her husband have been ambushed, and her family is being held hostage in her
03:13home.
03:14Janice has escaped, but her husband Robert, son Richard, and daughter Mina are still trapped inside.
03:22That time of morning, you can get around pretty good.
03:24So I was there very quickly.
03:26As I drive up to the scene, I see numerous Montgomery Township police cars.
03:31I see yellow crime scene tape already.
03:34The first responding Montgomery Township detective gave me a brief overview of what they found when they arrived there.
03:48Officers had forced entry into the home.
03:49The offenders had already escaped, and they found Richard Che and Mina Che bound with duct tape.
03:58The kids are alive, 22-year-old Mina and 29-year-old Richard.
04:04And then they took me inside to do a walkthrough.
04:07The garage is an attached garage.
04:11And to gain access, you can either do it through the outside garage doors, or you can enter it from
04:17the kitchen.
04:19Before I even stepped into the garage, I saw the victim lying on the floor, bleeding duct tape tied up.
04:30His hands were zip-tied behind his back, and the duct tape was so extensive that only his nose and
04:35nostrils stuck out.
04:37I didn't understand why it was necessary to duct tape his head.
04:42They wrapped his head so many times, it looked like almost an entire roll of duct tape had been used.
04:5258-year-old Robert Che is pronounced dead at the scene.
04:57We needed the crime scene unit, all the members of the homicide unit.
05:02I was able to tour the crime scene.
05:04It's always important.
05:06Helps you with your questioning.
05:08My memory in the walkthrough of the house, specifically, was of a photograph of Robert Che in his South Korean
05:19military uniform.
05:24And learning that he was Special Forces for South Korea.
05:29And he was an immigrant to the United States.
05:33As I was gathering information at the location, I learned that the victim had been a business owner of a
05:41beauty supply store in Suburban Station in Philadelphia.
05:47I worked with the Chae's at Penn Center Beauty Supply for a good five years.
05:53I really loved the Che family.
05:56And they opened their arms to me, and the love that you felt from them, it was like a given
06:02in the community.
06:04They were not just nice to one person.
06:07They were nice to everybody.
06:12Robert was phenomenal.
06:14He was just really funny, and he worked so hard.
06:19When he came to USA, Robert came from South Korea.
06:23He said it was really bad.
06:26He did.
06:26He said he came from poverty.
06:29He came here with under $1,000.
06:38My father, like a lot of members of the community, knew Robert, and that he was, you know, just a
06:44great, hardworking, loving man.
06:48He and his wife, Janice, worked very hard at their jobs, and they just essentially wanted to live the American
06:56dream.
06:57He was always working, like, he didn't take a break.
07:02Because all he did was work, work so they can have.
07:06And it's like, so unfair.
07:10I just feel good for Janice alone.
07:19The family was extraordinarily upset, inconsolable.
07:26But what's paramount early on is to interview Richard Che, Mina Che, and Janice Che as effectively and quickly as
07:34possible.
07:36Janice cooperated fully and gave the best descriptions that she could give about what took place in the home that
07:42morning.
07:45Janice Che told investigators that around 5, 10 a.m., she and Robert were in the garage area of the
07:53home preparing to leave to go to their business in Philadelphia.
07:57It was typical for them to start the days very early in the morning.
08:05As they were leaving their garage, they were ambushed.
08:12One man specifically heads towards Robert, beats him up, restrains him with duct tape.
08:20Robert's left in the garage.
08:22Then the other men forced Janice into the house.
08:26The men who committed this crime were not wearing masks.
08:30Janice was able to look at their faces, and she was able to describe clothing and builds and that they
08:37were African American.
08:39And it's an armed robbery.
08:41There's multiple guns brandished.
08:43Mrs. Che told me that they asked her where the safe in the house was.
08:49And they forced her up the steps to the bedroom where the safe was and made her open.
08:57They wake up her children, and then she and her children are tied up and duct taped.
09:03Two of the men returned to the second floor of the house.
09:07And one of the intruders was left to guard Janice Richard Amina with a handgun.
09:16And he's making and getting a number of phone calls.
09:20And it appears as though this man is angry, going back and forth with the phone calls to the other
09:27men in the house.
09:30Janice says that after a few minutes, the assailant went upstairs, leaving her and the children alone.
09:35Janice is able to somehow break free, goes running to a neighbor's house, and then is able to make that
09:43911 call.
09:47The offenders discovered her escape, and they themselves quickly escaped, because the obvious fear is that she is summoning the
09:56police.
09:57And in fact, their escape was probably so close, they might even see police cars.
10:02Because this all happened within just a couple minutes, them leaving and the police arriving.
10:07It's a harrowing account, and detectives find one detail especially troubling.
10:13The intruders who came into the Che house had no facial coverings.
10:28The fact that they're not wearing masks could be indicative of their intention to kill people and leave no witnesses
10:35to describe their faces.
10:38What were their plans with the others in the house?
10:41Would they have been killed had it not been for Janice's escape?
10:44We thought that was possible.
10:47Janice tells the police that these men were able to get about $20,000, some jewelry, and purses that were
10:54stored in her safe.
10:58We took Mina and Richard and Janice, the Montgomery County detectives, to have a sketch artist come and make composite
11:07drawings of perpetrators.
11:11And we had a flyer made up and distributed.
11:16At the same time, the crime scene unit systematically go from room to room and collect evidence.
11:22Police find zip ties.
11:25They find a lot of duct tape.
11:27They find a folding knife that has blood on it.
11:31And they also find a piece of a latex glove.
11:37That evidence went immediately to the state police lab for processing.
11:43The turnaround time sometimes is long.
11:45But we requested a rush on it because of the severity of the crime and the danger of the community.
11:56We needed to identify who these people were to take them off the street.
12:00With the neighborhood about to learn that one of their own was brutally killed, and three armed men are on
12:05the loose, Santorelli's team races against the clock.
12:09We had a meeting to discuss all the facts that we had learned, and the discussion circled back to the
12:17cell phone usage.
12:19Janice Tate was able to observe that the offenders were talking on their cell phones often.
12:25Janice did not elaborate what was said, but there was a lot of conversation back and forth.
12:30One of my responsibilities during that era in homicide was cell phone research.
12:36And it was relatively new at this time, but as far as local authorities, we were on the leading edge
12:42of things.
12:45That hour of the day is important for us because it's a low cell phone usage time.
12:49Not many people spend a lot of time on their cell phones between 5 and 6 a.m.
12:54I was excited about what we could find through cell phone research.
12:59If we can identify those phone numbers, we're going to get these guys.
13:08Coming up.
13:09The people behind this crime, they knew this house had a safe.
13:13Someone had given them inside information about the home.
13:17Everyone was just horrified by the level of betrayal.
13:20He's been talking to the killers.
13:23That's where the Chays are staying.
13:25We have to get this family out of there.
13:34In January of 2009, in the quiet Philly suburb of North Wales, neighbors wake to horrifying news.
13:42Robert Shea, a local businessman, was murdered in his own home.
13:47And three suspects are on the run.
13:49Now, data from their cell phone usage may be the key to stopping them before they kill again.
14:00We created court orders for the cell phone companies that used the towers closest to the Chay House
14:07to pull all the phone numbers that came off in and out of that tower during the time the robbery
14:14was taking place.
14:16Cell phone research takes time.
14:18So, the district attorney, Montgomery County, authorized thousands of dollars to be spent for expedited cell phone record delivery.
14:26And then you painfully wait for it to come in.
14:33Our next steps forward with the investigation, we're going to try to do neighborhood canvas.
14:41The tiny town in North Wales could be described as picturesque suburbia.
14:46It's about 25, 30 miles away from Center City, Philadelphia.
14:51It's a bedroom community.
14:52So, people are traveling in and out of the city every day to go to work.
14:58The North Wales area has a rather large Korean-American community.
15:02And so, the support system is really there by other members of the community.
15:06A lot of the Koreans that are living in the North Wales are business owners.
15:10But those businesses are primarily located in the Philadelphia area.
15:19The neighbors really didn't have anything that was beneficial to us.
15:25And no surveillance video that we found had anything that could help us.
15:30Within hours, journalists and news crews are also on the scene.
15:35We get out there and we want to talk to neighbors.
15:38We wanted to know more about the family.
15:40We wanted to know what happened.
15:41We wanted to know how neighbors were feeling.
15:44People were too afraid to open the door because they felt scared.
15:52Having a homicide within our local community is unheard of.
15:56It really shocked and just devastated everyone.
15:59Their neighbors had just been targeted.
16:01Could they be next?
16:07There are murders that are run-of-the-mill murders.
16:09This is not, this is one that stands out and everybody who heard about it knew it stood out.
16:13So the coroner's office acted accordingly and assigned a pathologist to do the autopsy of Robert Chee within hours of
16:21his murder.
16:23They determined that he had several blunt force trauma injuries.
16:28And that he had bled profusely.
16:34And because his face was taped, there was no place for the blood to go but down his throat.
16:48Mr. Chee's death was due to asphyxiation from his own blood.
16:57Robert died a slow, painful death.
17:02The thing about it that was so bizarre was that brutality.
17:08In your average suburban burglary, it is almost always an unoccupied home.
17:14Many are during the daytime.
17:17And most burglars avoid contact with the homeowners.
17:21In contrast, these offenders that robbed and killed Robert Chee intentionally encountered the family.
17:29And it seemed unnecessary to beat him to the degree they beat him to successfully complete their robbery.
17:37So we wondered why that beating took place.
17:39The other thing that I thought was very odd was they specifically asked Janice Chee where the safe in the
17:46house was.
17:47The people behind this crime, they knew this house had a safe.
17:52It seemed apparent that there was inside information in play here.
17:55They were intercepted in their driveway at an early hour, which suggests they knew something about their habits.
18:03That suggested targeted violence.
18:06So it was important to us to ask the people that know them the best, they work with them, family
18:12members.
18:13Is there somebody who disliked them?
18:19In the first week following Robert's murder, the detectives interviewed a lot of people.
18:26Through these interviews, a picture of Robert Chee begins to emerge.
18:33Robert made work fun.
18:36He made you feel like it wasn't a job.
18:39They would bring their family sometimes to work.
18:42The sister would come, the nephew, Richard and Mina.
18:45They would just run around the store and it was like home to them.
18:50You know what I mean?
18:53He was...
18:54God, he was such a good-hearted guy.
18:56He was.
18:57A lot of times they would order dinner.
18:59If they had like the clothes laid, if we were still putting away inventory.
19:04We would all eat and feast.
19:07He would feed everybody.
19:10He was out to help others, you know, at all times.
19:14He did employ a few homeless men.
19:17And they were there for years.
19:19Workers here say this is the first time in 25 years his shop lights were off.
19:23So at 6 a.m. they knew something was terribly wrong.
19:27He was a great guy.
19:28Everybody liked...
19:29Everybody down here liked him.
19:30He was around all the time.
19:31He was here every day.
19:38To be successful is to work hard, save enough money, open up your own business.
19:43That's the American dream as far as from a Korean perspective.
19:48Robert Chee's murder was kind of a crack in that dream.
20:00He was a respected man.
20:01And everyone who knew him said the same things about him.
20:04They were all positive.
20:09He did not have enemies.
20:14We had to shift our focus.
20:17We had to look for other possibilities.
20:22As investigators continue to hunt for answers, news of the case reaches another jurisdiction of Philly's law enforcement community.
20:30During the Chee homicide, I was at Delaware County District Attorney's Office working as a special victims prosecutor,
20:37doing a lot of outreach to various communities, particularly the Asian American community.
20:43It was the end of 2008 where we saw a series of home invasion robberies against the Asian community.
20:51I had never actually seen anything quite like this in a short amount of time.
20:55There was approximately 14 or so.
21:00The trend was very unique in terms that they were being followed from their place of business.
21:05The homeowners were present in the home when it occurred and being tied up in their homes.
21:12When I heard about the Chee homicide, I wondered immediately whether it was related to this series of home invasion
21:18robberies.
21:20And when Montgomery County detectives asked the Philly DA's office about similar crimes in other districts, they start to connect
21:27the dots.
21:28The method of entry into the house, what was taken, use of guns, what happened at the Chee house, and
21:37all of the crimes that they learned about and recovered reports on were very strikingly similar.
21:53As detectives dig into Robert Chee's murder, they begin to explore a connection to brutal home invasions happening across the
22:01region.
22:02A lot of business men and women were being followed from their place of business in Philadelphia to the surrounding
22:07suburbs.
22:08They were specifically targeting Asian people because they believed that Asians were more likely to carry cash, have cash in
22:16their home, and less likely to notify police because of a language barrier or some other cultural barrier.
22:24Detectives head to Robert and Janice's shop, determined to find out if this was in fact where the Chee's first
22:30became targets.
22:32We did recover several days worth of video surveillance from the Chee's beauty store in Suburban Station.
22:40It's not a one-watch process. It's a watch, pause, re-watch. Watch, pause, re-watch. One hour of footage
22:48may take you three hours to view. It's painstaking work.
22:53One of the detectives noticed someone in a video that came close to the description that was in the composites
23:00that we had.
23:01We identify somebody we think could be involved by their appearance, by the way they're acting in the store.
23:07And that's when we had the Chee's view that portion of the video.
23:14And they could not identify that person that we were keying on as anyone who was in the home that
23:21day.
23:22You got your hopes up only to hear that it was not in fact your offenders.
23:26So there's a lot of ups and downs with this. There's a lot of exhaustion.
23:32With the suspects still unknown and at large, the threat to the community remains.
23:38Especially in neighborhoods like Philadelphia's Koreatown.
23:41In the 1970s, South Korea was such a poor country and with various immigration reform, a lot of folks from
23:48South Korea just realized that America was the land of opportunity.
23:52So you saw an influx of Koreans that came to the Philadelphia region.
23:58When other Korean business owners were notified of Mr. Chee's stabbing death, it sent a chill through the community and
24:04a warning.
24:05Be careful.
24:07We reached out to the Korean community and explained that they need to be vigilant about their surroundings.
24:13We really emphasized and encouraged business owners not to keep their same routines.
24:18If they thought they were being followed, we asked them not to drive home, but drive to the police station
24:23instead.
24:25No one is more aware of the danger than the Chee family, and they aren't taking any chances.
24:31After Robert Chee was murdered, Janice Chee, Richard Chee, and Mina Chee did not feel comfortable going back to their
24:38home to stay.
24:39Her husband had been brutally murdered in her home, and at this point, police don't have any suspects, no one's
24:46been arrested.
24:47They were still out there, and they might have an interest in harming the Chee's, even killing them, because they
24:54obviously are important witnesses to the murder of Robert Chee.
24:59Instead, they go live with relatives, Robert's sister, Anna, her husband, Sang, and their 25-year-old son, Angelo Shin.
25:09The family was incredibly close. The kids grew up together. They went to school together.
25:14Angelo grew up with Mina and Richard, literally like brothers and sister.
25:21Angelo lived with the Chase when his parents went to Korea to visit extended family for nearly a year.
25:30They're just a loving and caring family. They would have opened the doors for anyone in need, and I think
25:35that's the type of people that they were, Janice and Robert.
25:39So it was only natural that the Shins would now take in the Chase, despite the danger that followed them
25:45there.
25:45The Shins live only two miles away. They, too, own a business. They could be targeted as well.
25:57And we were canvassing the neighborhood again, and we came across a trash collector who told us that two days
26:07prior to the murder, early in the morning when he was doing his route through Gwynmont Drive,
26:11he saw an SUV with three black males, a few houses down from the Che house.
26:19One of the men was standing outside talking on his cell while the other two sat inside the vehicle.
26:24Based upon what the recycling truck driver told us, the people in that vehicle could have been the robbers that
26:31Janice Che described.
26:32A suspicious car casing the house in the days before the murder suggests to police that somebody was planning this.
26:40And if they can figure out who was in that car, they're one step closer to figuring out who killed
26:46Robert Che.
26:54A new lead has surfaced in the investigation of the murder of Robert Che, a car seen circling the house
27:02a few days before his murder.
27:06That is a big break because now we have a description of a person, a description of a vehicle, and
27:11we can research that further,
27:13re-canvass the neighborhood to see if anybody knows who the owner of the car is.
27:18Cameras which may shoot the major roadways which are near the Che's home, which do give easy access to Philadelphia,
27:24is something now we can research.
27:26And to find places that will have surveillance video that they will share with us like other businesses, private homes,
27:33a convenience store.
27:35So that kind of research is now taking place.
27:38As this lead heats up, the forensics come in.
27:42DNA profiles were established from DNA left on the duct tape and inside the tip of the latex glove.
27:50This is a promising find.
27:54They found DNA from two different people and then they submitted it to CODIS, which is a combined DNA database
28:02that the FBI runs.
28:07But there were no matches in CODIS for those profiles that we had.
28:12We had to explore other types of investigation.
28:18Cell phone records began to trickle in and we are organizing them and analyzing them as a team.
28:27Doing this type of work is like solving a puzzle inside a maze.
28:31Our goal is to identify phones that are in the same geographic location or talking to each other.
28:36We're not looking for a cell phone that's calling somebody in California.
28:39We're looking for a cell phone that's calling somebody from this very same cell tower that services the Che home.
28:45We identified three numbers that were in constant communication around the time of the murder.
28:52Both before and after the Che murders.
28:54All three of these phones utilized cell phone towers in the city of Philadelphia.
29:00Miles from the Che crime scene.
29:02But moved into Montgomery County, into the Che's neighborhood at the time of the murder.
29:09Aside from the morning of the murder, the three phones stayed in downtown Philly.
29:14Except one that pinged in Montgomery County on another day.
29:24One of those cell phones was tied to the Che neighborhood in the early morning hours of January 7th.
29:31Two days before Robert Che's murder.
29:33Which was important because that tied that particular phone to the vehicle that the recycling truck driver had seen.
29:41And the occupant of that vehicle.
29:45The unfortunate part was that there were no names attached to these phones, that they were burner phones.
29:52Burner phones are tough, but we've got our ways to trace them.
29:55We can still track where they've been and who they've communicated with.
29:59And by looking at when the phone was activated, we can narrow down where it was bought and who bought
30:05it.
30:08We will visit stores and ask the owners about timing of sales because you can see when the phone life
30:15began.
30:15Like you can see the purchase date and the activation date and you can see the first phone call the
30:20phone made.
30:21So you're able to focus owners of stores on particular dates, particular weeks.
30:25The challenge is that you've got Philadelphia metropolitan area.
30:31That's a lot of phone stores to look at.
30:35While teams canvass phone stores, Detective Kuklins continues to analyze the three burner phones.
30:42I'm running through one of the suspects' burner phones call detail records to identify who they talked to the most
30:48the day of the murder.
30:50And identify a number which this phone had repeatedly called.
30:54The predominant Montgomery County area code was 610.
30:58And it was a 610 number.
31:01And that really stood out to me.
31:04When Detective Kuklins searches that number, he catches a break.
31:12The last name of the user of that particular phone number was of particular interest to the case.
31:20Because it was a Korean name.
31:23And I yelled down the hall to my fellow detective a couple offices down.
31:28I said, who's Angelo Shin?
31:30And he said to me, that's the nephew.
31:34That's where the Ches are staying.
31:36And our concern immediately shifts now to the Ches family's well-being.
31:40Because they're under Angelo Shin's roof.
31:44The murderers have not been identified.
31:46The murderers are still on the streets.
31:49And the murderers are still in contact with Angelo Shin.
31:52We have to get this family out of there.
32:02Detectives learned one of the phones tied to Robert Ches' murder belongs to his 25-year-old nephew.
32:08Which means the Ches are now living under the same roof as someone who was possibly involved in the murder.
32:18We needed to find Angelo Shin and talk to him and find out why his telephone was communicating with these
32:25other three telephones that were in use during the robbery.
32:30I called Richard and I asked Richard, where can we find your cousin, Angelo?
32:37And Richard's response was, he's in the car with me right now.
32:41And I said, who else is with you?
32:43Here's my sister Mina's with us.
32:45He's literally in the car, we believed, with a co-conspirator to his father's murder.
32:51At that point, our concerns were already greatly elevated.
32:55And that just elevated them even more.
32:58Was Angelo Shin desperate?
33:00Was he sensing that we were going to find him?
33:02Would he harm his family members to not go to jail?
33:06We had to get them to a safe place and separate Angelo Shin from the Chae family.
33:13And so they calmly tell the kids, could all three of you come down?
33:17We just have a few extra questions for you.
33:19Trying to make it seem as normal as possible so that Angelo doesn't get spooked.
33:24And the kids don't know he's their suspect.
33:29They arrived at the police station, we had three separate interview rooms ready.
33:35We had a room for Richard, we had a room for Mina, and we had a room for Angelo.
33:41Now, we have to go in to the family's inner circle and really deliver a bomb.
33:48I sat with Richard in the one room and asked him about Angelo.
33:54And he gave me the background that Angelo lived with his family for a period of time
33:59because Angelo's parents were in Korea.
34:02And he asked me why I was asking.
34:05And I said, well, we believe he's involved in this robbery and the murder of your father.
34:11He was actually speechless.
34:18Angela's brought in for questioning.
34:21He was not a big man, 5'6", 5'7", not an imposing figure.
34:29He's cooperative.
34:30He talks to police as if he doesn't have anything to hide.
34:37And then police tell them, we have your number, we know your phone number,
34:42and the killer's phone numbers were talking, that the two phones were active.
34:47Angelo's shin was uneasy.
34:49It was obvious.
34:51Angelo tries to lie his way out of it.
34:53He denies talking with the killers.
34:57Although detectives have concrete evidence of Angelo lying,
35:00it's not enough to arrest him for murder.
35:03So they took a break and they came out and talked to the assistant DA
35:09and had a discussion with him about what took place in the room.
35:14And that's when the assistant DA said, we need to get him a lawyer before he says anything else.
35:20Because we didn't want to cause any problems further down the road when it was time to arrest people.
35:30I was contacted because Angelo Shin, who had been a client of mine, was a suspect and he was in
35:37police custody.
35:38I had represented him on a matter a year or two prior in Philadelphia County.
35:43It involved a marijuana charge that was resolved favorably on his behalf.
35:48And so I got to know him in that capacity.
35:52Now, David Mishak finds himself back at Angelo's side, inside the police station.
35:58They brought me up to speed with where the investigation was.
36:01Then I was afforded the opportunity to meet with Angelo.
36:04Now I had known Angelo from my prior representation as a young man, no prior criminal record.
36:09He's a young man that had graduated high school in Montgomery County, North.
36:13He had a year of college under his belt, seemed to have a positive outlook on his future, on his
36:21life.
36:21Was a very kind and respectful young man.
36:26But when I met him that day, I saw a young man completely distraught.
36:34Devastated by what had occurred and broken.
36:40And guilt-ridden as Mr. Shin was, he immediately came clean about what he had done.
36:50Coming up.
36:51It was like, what? Like, no, not the nephew.
36:54Not Angelo.
36:56Angelo asked Paige, why did you kill my uncle?
37:00He got $2,000 to turn on the people who took care of him.
37:07It's sad.
37:18With his attorney by his side, 25-year-old Angelo Shin agrees to talk to police.
37:25Once Angelo Shin decided to confess, we started to get a really complete picture of the planning and execution of
37:33this robbery and murder.
37:37Angelo Shin had his own cell phone business at a store in North Philadelphia.
37:42Through having a business in the community, he met a number of people on a day-to-day basis.
37:50Angelo struck up a friendship with one of the people from the neighborhood who was self-admittedly a hold-up
37:57guy, Joseph Paige.
38:06Angelo Shin was a wannabe.
38:10He wanted to fit into that neighborhood where the store was.
38:15And at one point, Angelo Shin told Paige about his uncle.
38:25Angelo admits he'd been kind of showing off, bragging that he knew how they could get their hands on $100
38:33,000.
38:35Angelo tells police at first they were joking.
38:37We could do this.
38:39We might be able to pull this off.
38:40But then Paige ropes in his friends.
38:45Amatadi Latham.
38:46Kyrie Pitts.
38:48Robert Edmond.
38:49Julius Wise.
38:51And Sybil White.
38:53They began holding planning sessions about committing this robbery and how they were going to do it.
39:00Angelo points to Paige, Latham, and Pitts as the three who carried out the robbery, while the others assisted in
39:06planning and driving the getaway car.
39:09He not only outlined what happened before the murder, he outlined what happened after the murder.
39:15And of particular interest was the fact that Angelo Shin traveled to Philadelphia to collect his share of the take
39:24of the Che robbery.
39:27And his share was $2,000.
39:32He got $2,000 to turn on the people who took care of him.
39:39It's...
39:41It's sad.
39:44There was some anger among the robbers that it wasn't $100,000, and it was much less than that.
39:49That was part of the conversation.
39:51Angelo also tells detectives that no one was supposed to get hurt.
39:57Angelo asked Paige, why did you kill my uncle?
40:02Angelo.
40:03And he laughed it off.
40:06And attributed to being the uncle's fault for fighting back.
40:11The man was a warrior.
40:12He put up a fight.
40:19Once we had the names of the participants, everyone was rounded up.
40:24And we take DNA samples from them.
40:28The DNA found in the tip of the finger of the piece of the latex glove belonged to Joseph Paige.
40:35DNA found on the duct tape belonged to Amitani Latham.
40:39On February 4th, they were all charged with the murder and robbery of Mr. Che.
40:47As information came out of Angelo, his nephew's involvement, there was a sense of shock for, you know, everyone.
40:55A sense of disbelief.
40:57It was just absolutely devastating, and I couldn't fathom the amount of betrayal that the family would have felt.
41:04It was like, what? Like, nah, not the nephew.
41:08Not the nephew.
41:10Not Angelo.
41:12Angelo's like his son.
41:14That's the heartbreak.
41:17Robert took him in like a child.
41:19Like it was his own son.
41:21Gave him everything and anything.
41:23For that $2,000, like, are you kidding me?
41:26Like, really?
41:27Mm.
41:29Mm-mm-mm.
41:31Pisses me off.
41:32It does.
41:42In 2010, the Planning and Getaway crew, Robert Eatman, Sybil White, and Julius Wise all plead guilty to third-degree
41:50murder.
41:59The other three went on trial.
42:01Paige and Latham got life in prison, and Kyrie Pitts was acquitted.
42:11Angelo Shin pleads guilty to third-degree murder and is sentenced to 20 to 40 years.
42:18He's where he belongs.
42:22Angelo made adult decisions, and I believe Angelo got to pay for them.
42:30Robert will never be free. He'll never be here.
42:34If there was one thing that I could say to Robert right now, I would thank him, just for his
42:39kindness.
42:40Just thank him, just for being who he is.
42:42We'll be the first
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