Oct 19, 2023 By Mike Jones 5 min read

Feeling jilted over a business relationship that had apparently soured, Keven Van Lam allegedly lured Boyke Budiarachman to a Rostraver Township restaurant for a sushi dinner minutes before the victim was shot and killed by a hit man in the parking lot last November, according to testimony at Lam’s preliminary hearing Wednesday.

Lam had paid Budiarachman nearly $800,000 in late 2019 and early 2020 to purchase a temporary employment business along with three houses in the Mon Valley and eight transport vans to carry migrant workers when the arrangement seemed to change.

A few months after the deals closed, Lam believed Budiarachman was undercutting his business by hiring the migrants to work elsewhere while still charging him $8,000 every two weeks in order to keep some of his temp workers employed at Fourth Street Foods butchering plant, where Budiarachman was head of hiring.

Fourth Street Foods has two processing plants in the Charleroi area, which employs hundreds of migrant workers on green card work visas, who are apparently hired, housed and transported through contractor companies.

“I feel bad,” Lam said in the 21-minute video interview with police a day after Budiarachman’s killing. “I buy the business from him … and he takes my people.”

Later in the video, which was played at Wednesday’s hearing, Lam told investigators he agreed to pay a person $65,000 to beat up Budiarachman in the Rostraver Square strip mall parking lot. But the hit man instead shot Budiarachman, 49, of Rostraver, in the top of the head from point blank range, killing him Nov. 5, 2022. The shooter, who was described in testimony by Westmoreland County Detective Rick Kranitz as a Black man wearing a florescent vest in order to look like a parking attendant, has never been identified or located.

Lam told investigators he wanted Budiarachman to have a “small wound” by being struck in the leg with a baseball bat and did not expect him to be killed.

“I know I did wrong,” Lam told investigators in the video. “Hit him. I don’t go to jail for long. But they killed him.”

Lam, 56, who is originally from Vietnam and has a permanent address in Philadelphia, was taken into custody at his temporary home in North Strabane Township the day after the killing and interviewed about what he knew since he was the last person to be seen with Budiarachman before his death.

Kranitz testified that Lam initially was untruthful about what transpired immediately after Budiarachman’s killing. But after three hours in the police interview, Lam admitted to investigators that he felt he had been swindled out of the $789,000 he paid Budiarachman for the temp worker business, properties and vans since the former business associate was undercutting him by hiring his workers for other jobs. Before the video recording, Kranitz testified that Lam told them he wanted Budiarachman to be shot, but not killed.

“During an earlier interview, he said he wanted him shot in the leg. … It shifted gears from being shot to the baseball bat to everyone going on their way. Once the tape went on, he was trying to downplay his involvement,” Kranitz said.

After the shooting, Kranitz said Lam stuck around in the Rostraver Square strip mall parking lot and watched as police officers and paramedics swarmed the scene. Lam then drove on the Pennsylvania Turnpike back to Philadelphia that night and allegedly called the contact person for the hit, whom he identified as “Mr. Taun,” and told him he would leave $65,000 in an envelope in the mailbox at his permanent home, which he did. He threw the “burner phone” he used for the call out the window onto the Turnpike, and Kranitz said it’s never been recovered.

The case has been cloaked in mystery since the charges and criminal affidavit against Lam were sealed through a court order following his arrest. The preliminary hearing has been delayed seven times and investigators have released no details about the motive or how the killing transpired until Wednesday’s hearing before District Judge Wayne Vlasic.

Wednesday afternoon’s hearing at the Westmoreland County Courthouse lasted nearly three hours because an interpreter speaking Vietnamese was required to translate testimony.

Defense attorney Lyle Dresbold argued that the alleged confession should not be admissible because Lam told investigators that he only understood about 60% of what was being said during the police interview. He added that there is no evidence that Lam wanted Budiarachman dead.

“Mr. Lam did not shoot anyone,” Dresbold said. “He did not kill anyone, although he may have been involved in the scheme.”

Kranitz, who interviewed Lam during the interrogation, said he believed he understood what was being said and could speak fluent English when he gave his formal statements.

“Everything that happened, the circumstances of the case, happened because of Keven,” Kranitz said.

Vlasic ultimately ordered Lam to stand trial on charges of first-degree murder, two counts of homicide and one charge of evidence tampering. Lam is being held without bond at the Westmoreland County jail while awaiting trial.

It’s not known why the case was sealed or why the hearings have been delayed on multiple occasions upon mutual agreements between the prosecution and defense. The Observer-Reporter, Herald-Standard and Mon Valley Independent newspapers petitioned the state Superior Court earlier this year to unseal the docket showing the charges, which it did, but the details of the case in the affidavit have remained secret.

Westmoreland County Assistant District Attorney Anthony Iannamorelli said after the hearing that he expected the criminal complaint that has been sealed for nearly a year following Lam’s arrest should be made public this morning and available for review at the Clerk of Courts office.