A brother and sister accused of killing a businessman out for a walk in Cerritos for his SUV had also planned to kill their older sister and her family because she thwarted an effort by the siblings to take over the La Palma home where their mother lived, prosecutors alleged at a preliminary hearing last month.
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In a notebook found by detectives following the arrests of John Chong Uk Moon, 55, and Cindy Kim, 59, Moon allegedly wrote that he and his sister had to “scrape, struggle, struggle to make rent on studio 1 bedroom while (their mother) lives in luxury, comfort lifestyle!” Yoon Nam, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective, testified during the hearing.
In another entry, the detective said, Moon wrote: “Get our ‘last bastion’ of wealth … by any means necessary! Bogart our way back and pressure her to sell the house!”
Moon and Kim face charges of murder, attempted robbery and conspiracy to commit murder related to the Feb. 25, 2025, shooting of 66-year-old Cuauhtémoc Garcia Zuniga, with Moon facing additional charges of evading a peace officer and two misdemeanor counts of unlawful firearm activity. The victim was a successful businessman and a husband and a father of two.
They were arrested in Anaheim on March 10, 2025, following a short vehicle pursuit from Fullerton, officials said, with police deploying a Taser on Moon before taking him into custody.
In a transcript obtained by the Southern California News Group from the siblings’ preliminary hearing on May 4-5, the detective testified that authorities found about a half-dozen notebooks in Kim’s bag and in their car.
Inside those notebooks were diary entries that appeared to lay out a plan, prosecutors say, to kill their older sister, Amy Goldstein, and her family in Fontana, along with a neighbor of their mother. Prosecutors had Detective Nam read some of the entries in the notebook.
In one early entry in November 2024, Kim allegedly wrote, “We are supposed to order our firearm to take down the Goldsteins,” with another of hers in early December 2024 reading, “Stole some bullets at Sportsman’s.”
The siblings were living out of a 2018 Prius and wanted a bigger vehicle to sleep in, specifically either a Honda Pilot or a Toyota 4Runner, prosecutors alleged. While near Don Knabe Community Regional Park in Cerritos on Feb. 25, 2025, prosecutors say, they noticed Garcia park a 4Runner in the parking lot and then go for a walk along the Coyote Creek riverbed trail.
The siblings followed, with Moon allegedly firing at Garcia, who was on the path, after he refused to give up his keys, prosecutors allege. A witness told detectives he saw the shooting and provided descriptions of people, which match Moon’s and Kim’s, take Garcia’s body to a dirt embankment, Nam testified. Moon’s defense attorney, in her line of questioning during the hearing, tried to raise suspicion that the witness may have been the actual suspect.
The siblings allegedly were caught on surveillance cameras, though the shooting itself was not.
Detective Nam told the court an anonymous caller reached out and alerted the department to some TikTok video taken of the siblings in Cypress. Fox 11 reported that the video was taken by a visiting Florida resident who started recording after at least one person allegedly started hurling racial slurs. The video led detectives to ID them as they resembled the pair seen running on the surveillance cameras.
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And a park employee told detectives that he recognized the siblings because they had been hanging out in their car at the park in the days leading up to the shooting, Nam said.
Garcia’s keys were found in a zipped pocket on the inside lining of his shorts.
At the scene, detectives also found nine shell casings.
Nam said those casings matched ammunition in a 9mm handgun found in the trunk of the Prius following the siblings’ arrest. A criminalist testified that test firing of the handgun confirmed it was the gun used in the murder.
In jail, Moon made statements that were recorded with undercover agents present indicating that he “killed an innocent guy, that it was over his SUV,” Nam testified. Moon also said, Nam testified, that the Prius was too small to sleep in.
Goldstein, the older sister, said in the hearing she and her three siblings, including another sister who was the youngest of the four, were raised by their mother in La Palma and that while she and the younger sister moved out, Moon and Kim struggled to do so and depended on their mother.
Goldstein said she helped get her mother a pair of restraining orders against her two siblings, the defendants, in 2016 and 2022. The brother and sister also allegedly forged their mother’s signature on a deed-transfer document for the La Palma house, and Moon allegedly tried to sell the house on Craigslist, Goldstein testified.
Leading up to Garcia’s death, Kim bought a 9-mm semiautomatic handgun and a rifle, prosecutors say in court documents, and had practiced shooting with the weapons.
In an entry dated Feb. 25, 2025 — the day Garcia was killed — Detective Nam testified that Kim wrote: “Dirty deed Cerritos Bloomfield.”
The park is on Bloomfield Avenue.
For an entry for March 8, 2025, she allegedly wrote: “We slept in (the) Bloomfield park until we saw our picture posted in front of bathroom.”
Posters looking for the suspects had been circulated.
Two days later, Moon and Kim were arrested.
Defense attorneys asked the judge to dismiss the case, citing the eyewitness as not credible and the overall evidence as insufficient. One said Moon’s statements the undercover officers heard were “after a stint of hospitalization” and that he also talked in jail about “a variety of medical and mental-health conditions” that may have affected his ability to communicate clearly.
One lawyer said Moon told his defense team: “You know what? I think I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone snapped our photo. … I don’t have any involvement in this.”
The judge disagreed about dismissing the case, and instead said it will proceed to a trial.
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