On the evening of August 2, 2022, Detective Sharon Kim of the Los Angeles Police Department was called to Martha Street in a residential neighborhood of Woodland Hills. When she headed to the scene, she knew it was a possible home invasion and murder case.
But she did not expect a gruesome crime scene that would become her obsession for the next three years.
What Kim found at the home was astonishing: an elderly Asian woman in a her bedroom — stabbed, strangled and burned. It was apparent that someone broke into the woman’s house before killing her.
“I can honestly say that in my entire career, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a senseless and brutal act of murder,” Kim had said a couple of months after the elderly woman was found dead in 2022.
The victim, whose face was unrecognizable at the crime scene, was later identified as 81-year-old Ok Ja Kim (no relation to Detective Kim), a Korean American immigrant with church-going mother and a grandmother with no enemies whatsoever.
Brutal killing of an elderly woman with no suspect in sight
Because the killer burned Ok Ja Kim’s body, there wasn’t much DNA evidence left at the scene. There was an ALO hat that the murdered may have left behind at the Woodland Hills home.
With little to go on, Detective Kim and Clara Kim, the victim’s daughter, held a news conference to plead for the public’s help as officials offered a $50,000 reward to catch the killer.
“We need your help,” the victim’s daughter had pleaded during a news conference in October 2022. “This was monstrous, this is disgusting, and it needs to be stopped.
A tipster, an Asian American neighbor who lived in an apartment building near Ok Ja Kim’s house, sent the detective security camera footage of a suspicious man roading around the hallway and leaning into the neighbor’s Ring camera.
The detective held on to the footage without knowing that it would be one of the key pieces of evidence in the murder of Ok Ja Kim
‘It was meant to be.’
Growing up in La Crescenta, Detective Kim didn’t think law enforcement was a career option.
The UCLA graduate wasn’t sure what she’d do with her life as she was feeling dissatisfies working at a law firm some 20 years go.
As she was driving home, she heard a recruitment advertisement from the LAPD, then an LAPD patrol car zoom past her with the police department’s billboard as a backdrop.
The serendipitous moment led Kim to a recruiting seminar, which made her start thinking about serving her hometown as a police officer.
“I remember having a lot of doubts because, you know, it was a male-dominated profession, paramilitary, and that’s just never something, a role that I saw myself in — especially coming from my background and culture,” she said.
“When I was at the recruitment seminar, and I just kind of thought like, ‘Okay, if I do something that’s unexpected, something that kind of breaks the mold, I can show other people that this is something that they can also do, not to be boxed in by something, by your culture,” Kim recalled.
When less than 9% of the LAPD employees is Asian American, Kim said she was told to work four times harder as an Asian American officer — and she did. When she became Detective III with the LAPD, she was the youngest person to reach the level.
Twenty years with the LAPD, Kim is one of the few Asian American women detectives. She’s also a respected supervisor for a homicide squad, with one of her team members calling her a “chill, easy-going” and hardworking supervisor who can help solve crimes expeditiously.
Prosecutors have now charged Erick Escamilla with the 2022 murder of an 81-year-old woman and the 2022 attempted murder of another man. Investigative Reporter Eric Leonard reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18, 2025.
A break in the 2022 murder case
Detective Kim was assigned to other stories after Ok Ja Kim’s murder, but the case never left her mind.
“That really sat with me very heavy,” the LAPD veteran looked back “Like, how am I going to live the rest of my life knowing that this perpetrator who did something so horrific is out there? How can I let myself live my day-to-day life without bringing justice to Mrs. Kim and her family?”
The detective never stopped looking at potential suspects.
Then a break finally came in April 2025: A man was arrested for breaking into an apartment complex on Riverside Drive in Valley Village. The suspect, Erick Escamilla, allegedly killed the resident.
When Detective Kim saw the surveillance video inside the apartment, it reminded her of the security video she received from the community member in 2022.
“I’d seen some videos of this person roaming the hallways, and at that moment I was like, ‘I think this is my guy,'” Kim recalled. “He had the same walk, he had the same the way, he was just roaming the hallways and kind of like at people’s door.”
When she looked up Escamilla’s records, he had quite the rap sheet. She also learned Escamilla had been arrested for a residential burglary a month after Ok Ja Kim’s death.
“When I put everything together, and I knew it was him,” she said.
With all the evidence collected, the detective was able to get a confession from him that Escamilla is indeed the killer who took the life of the elderly woman, robbing her away from her daughters and grandchildren.
“I gave everything that I’ve had to finding out what happened to her and who did this,” Kim said.
After Kim solved the case, Lt. Guy Golan of the LAPD said she was “relentless” in pursuing leads and questioning potential suspects.
‘I hope I’ve done her some honor.’
Kim said solving Ok Ja Kim’s murder seem like the pinnacle of her career. She believes the case has impacted her career more than any other.
She said the 81-year-old could read in peace now, knowing her killer is behind bars.
” I think about her every day, and that I hope that I’ve brought her some sense of peace and closure to her family,” Kim said. “I hope I’ve done her some honor by closing the case.”
Inspiring future LAPD detectives
While the younger Kim didn’t think a career in law enforcement was an option, the detective now wants young people to know the police department is more diverse, representing different communities of Los Angeles.
Her advice to those who are thinking about joining the LAPD or other law enforcement agency: “Don’t listen to your haters.”
“If people doubt you, just throw your show through your work ethic that you have what it takes. That’s I have done,” she said
She also encouraged aspiring officers and detectives to find their supporters and allies who can offer advice.
“Keep going after what you want and don’t let anybody derail you from assignments that you want to work.”