The investigation was started by Baltimore County police and prosecutors who brought the original charges after the killing last year. In recent months, they received assistance from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The federal prosecution team is led by Assistant U.S. Attorneys John F. Purcell Jr. and Michael Hanlon.
It was chance that caused Lackl to stumble upon a shooting in a city alley on March 4, 2006, according to Baltimore prosecutors.
Lackl had stopped in an East Baltimore alley on his lunch break when he saw a man shoot another and then hide a gun, according to court documents and Lackl's family. Lackl later identified Byers as the shooter of Larry Haynes, 30, according to the documents.
Margaret Mead, a defense attorney who represents Byers, said her client denies any involvement in Lackl's death.
It was unclear how Byers might have learned about Lackl's role in the case. But according to the original account by county police, Byers sent a text message calling for Lackl's murder to a BlackBerry in the possession of Goodman, described in county court documents as a friend who had visited Byers in jail more than 20 times.
Sources familiar with the federal investigation say text messages will not be featured as part of the government's case. Part of the problem, they said, is that the phone company rarely keeps such messages more than 30 days.
Instead, the indictment unsealed yesterday focused on the repeated cell phone calls among the defendants. Federal investigators also used cell tower hits to pinpoint where a mobile phone was used and show that Byers made calls setting up the murder from jail in Baltimore, according to sources.
According to court documents and sources close to the investigation, Goodman enlisted Marcus Antwan Pearson, 26, a Bloods gang member. Pearson, who was charged in Baltimore County, was not named in yesterday's federal indictment.
Pearson then contracted with gang members, including Michael Jerome Randle, 19, Steven "Trigger" Thompson, 26, and Johnathan Ryan Cornish, who was 15 at the time, to kill Lackl. Cornish was not named in yesterday's federal indictment.
Known as "original young gangsters," they were members of a faction of the Bloods gang known as the Pasadena Denver Lanes, named for a street in Los Angeles, according to sources.
