Suspect in 2002 Md. slaying eluded capture for 12 years after switching identities -

Last spring, a successful music promoter who went by the name Dennis Alfredo Graham presented his passport at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. He checked in for a flight to Jamaica and started to walk away.

Trailing behind were several cops, convinced they’d finally caught up to a man with the real name Clement Reynolds. Twelve years earlier, officials allege, Reynolds walked up to a man he knew outside an apartment building in Montgomery County, pointed a gun at his face and killed him in front of his screaming 11-year-old daughter.

“I put my hand on him,” a U.S. customs officer testified in a Rockville courtroom several days ago, “and took him down.”

His recollections were part of a gripping trial set to enter its second week Monday. The victim’s daughter, now 23, has testified, telling jurors in heart-wrenching detail how a man seated 20 feet away allegedly shot her dad. The defendant also has testified and says he had nothing to do with the slaying and was in New York when it occurred. Three alibi witnesses have tried to back him up.

Beyond the killing, the proceedings have shown how easy it was for Reynolds, now 39, to take on a whole new identity.

Back in 2002, with Montgomery detectives hot on his trail, Reynolds used fake documents, which he had purchased from underground markets, to get an identification card from Connecticut. Equipped with that card, along with a purported birth certificate from the Virgin Islands, he got a U.S. passport that said he was a 19-year-old student — eight years younger than his real age, according to his testimony and that of a State Department investigator. Reynolds said he switched identities rather than risk getting locked up for something he didn’t do.

“I decided not to take the chance and go to the police,” Reynolds said. “So I became Dennis Graham.”

At the time, the homicide of Wesley King in Montgomery’s Briggs Chaney area didn’t receive much attention. But behind the scenes, detectives had two strong leads: a witness account by King’s daughter and a cellphone, found at the crime scene, that had a New York City area code.

Detectives studied the phone’s tracking data, which showed that starting after 6 the evening of the killing, the phone began to move south from New York City — through New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland — before arriving in Montgomery by 10:43p.m. About 17 minutes later, King was shot. The phone was listed to a Brooklyn business, Changez Hair Salon. Detectives tracked down the salon owner, who said that she was Clement Reynolds’s girlfriend and that he was with her the night of the shooting. But she wouldn’t tell detectives where he was. The trail went cold.

Exactly how Reynolds — 12 years later — came to the attention of law enforcement has not been revealed. In interviews, officials at four federal and local agencies involved in his capture wouldn’t say. The subject hasn’t been addressed at the trial.

Prosecutors have focused more on what happened in 2002. At the time, Reynolds lived in New York, was a major marijuana dealer and had King working Maryland distribution for him, prosecutor Marybeth Ayres told jurors during her opening statement. The two men began arguing over money. On Nov. 18 of that year, Reynolds and an accomplice drove to Montgomery in a white van, Ayres said.

To help explain to jurors what happened next, she called Nickesha King, the victim’s daughter, to the witness stand. She is now married, has a young daughter and works in the health-care industry.

In a bright red dress, King walked slowly to the front of the courtroom. She took a deep breath and sat down.

As a young girl, she told jurors, she lived in Los Angeles with her dad and other relatives. He told her that he had to leave for a while, doing so in vague terms. “He would never tell me where he was going,” King said, choking up.

In the fall of 2002, when she was 11, she went to visit her dad for a week. He picked her up at the airport. They went out to dinner. They met his friends. He took her to the mall to get her ears pierced.

“I asked him to call my mom to see if I could stay with him a little longer,” she testified.

Her mother said yes, which resulted in the young girl still being with her dad the night of Nov. 18, 2002. Around 11 p.m., they were walking back to his apartment building. Two men, dressed in black, approached quickly from behind.

One pushed her dad, grabbed his throat and pointed a gun at his face. The other grabbed Nickesha King and signaled for her to stay quiet. “Shhh,” he said.

King told jurors that her dad called out one of the attackers’ names: “Clement.”

Shots rang out. The two men ran off. Her dad turned to her.

"He looked over to me," King said, her words interrupted by soft sobs. "He started walking away. ... Swaying side to side. ... He fell. ... I ran over to him. ... He was choking. I held his head on my lap."

King tried to collect herself. Ayres showed her photographs of the crime scene to confirm how it appeared 12 years ago. The last photo was her dad’s body. King nodded that it was him, her cries growing louder.

Ayres asked for a break. King stood up, looking around for a place where no one could see her, ducked into the empty jury deliberation room, and wept.

Later, under cross-examination, Reynolds’s attorney, Robert Bonsib, was able to chip away at King’s 12-year-old memory and different statements she had made to police. He noted that at one point, when she spoke to police in 2002, she said a man named “Clive” or “Clivie” had shot her dad. He got King to say she did not remember an entire conversation with detectives in 2003.

On Friday, Bonsib called three witnesses to the stand — all friends or ex-girlfriends of Reynolds, who faces a first-degree murder charge — who said they saw Reynolds in New York on the night of the killing.

The defendant has shown jurors a relaxed, calm composure, consistent with the nickname "Happy" he had gone by. He told jurors Friday how concerned he became in 2002 when he learned Montgomery detectives were looking for him: "When the police actually showed up in New York, that's when I was like, 'Wow, this is real.'"

Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.

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