3 face trial in home-invasion killing

The son of murdered businessman Robert Chae told a rapt courtroom audience yesterday in Montgomery Township that he was shaken awake on the morning of Jan. 9 by two men, one of whom pistol-whipped him.

Blank-faced and bespectacled, Richard Chae, 29, told how the pair had "dragged" him from his bedroom into the basement of the Chae family home in Montgomeryville, where they and a third man bound him with duct tape.

The men wanted money from a safe; the family acquiesced, but it didn't appear to matter, the son testified. "It seemed that they weren't satisfied, and that they thought that we had more," Chae said.

Chae's testimony came during a three-hour preliminary hearing before District Judge David A. Keightly. The judge ordered three Philadelphia men - Joseph Page, Karre Pitts and Amatadi Latham - held for trial.

Each is accused of murder and four counts of robbery in the elder Chae's killing. Two other Philadelphia men, Julius Wise and Robert Eatman, who face the same charges, waived their rights to a preliminary hearing.

Angelo Shin, 25, of North Wales, Robert Chae's nephew by marriage, waived his preliminary hearing Feb. 13. All of the men are being held without bail at the Montgomery County prison.

Eatman appeared as a prosecution witness against Page, Pitts, and Latham. Keightly would not permit testimony on what kind of a deal Eatman had received for agreeing to testify.

Shin, who was taken in by Robert Chae after immigrating from Korea, set the stage for the home invasion late in 2008 by telling the men there was a safe containing cash and other valuables in the Chae house, Eatman testified.

"Spade [Page's street name] came to talk to me about this sting he knew of that we could do," Eatman said in response to a question from Montgomery County prosecutor Kevin Steele. By "sting," Eatman said, he meant a robbery.

Earlier in 2009, Eatman said, he drove Page to case the Chaes' neighborhood. "We got lost," Eatman testified. "We had to call up Shin for directions."

On Jan. 8, the day before the crime, all six men met at a home in the Logan section of Philadelphia, Eatman said. "Shin was going through the details of how to get in, where to go, where the safe was at," Eatman testified.

On the day of the crime, Eatman was alone in one getaway car, he told the court.

A second driver, Sybil White, 17, of Southwest Philadelphia, drove the others in her mother's Cadillac Escalade, she testified. She was charged with murder, conspiracy, and other offenses.

She told the court that she was paid $500 to drive, and that all she knew about the mission was what Page had told her - "he was going to get some money, and he wanted me to drive," White said.

White said she dropped off the four men near the Chae home, then went to wait at a nearby Wawa. She played the radio and drove around while she waited, White testified. When she was "chirped" on her cell phone, she went back to pick them up, White testified.

Talk among the men on the return ride to Philadelphia centered on whether the gang "took too long there," White said, and whether there were security cameras in the house.

There was no testimony about who actually committed the killing. Robert Chae, 58, owner of a beauty-supply store in Center City, died from asphyxiation due to duct tape wrapped around his head, county Detective Michael Gilbert testified.

Before that, Chae was beaten so savagely by Page, 23, that investigators at first thought he had been fatally stabbed, court papers allege.

The thieves escaped with $15,000 to $20,000, jewelry and a bank book. Richard Chae testified that he and his mother freed themselves from restraints while their captors were upstairs searching for more money.

She ran outside to a neighbor. He ran upstairs and barred himself in his bedroom, then called 911.

"A lot of things were broken," Richard Chae said he noticed. "My wallet was empty. My watch was gone."

In an unusual move, the preliminary hearing for the five defendants was shifted from District Court to larger quarters in the Montgomery Township Administration Building. That was because there were "so many defendants," the District Attorney's Office said.

No date has been set for trial in Montgomery County Court in Norristown.