'NYPD 24/7' : A Top Detective, Challenged

July 13, 2004 -- On a warm afternoon last May, Mike Hinrichs stood in an alley in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn while his partner, Sam Ortiz, described the heavy, shapeless package that crime scene officers dragged from underneath a rusting ice-cream truck.

Ortiz described how the officers unwrapped a dark blanket to reveal a woman's body.

A detective in the New York City Police Department, Hinrichs had seen more than his share of ghastly crime scenes on the city streets. But this investigation would be one of the worst in his career.

Ortiz went on to explain that the woman's face had been crushed and her feet and hands were bound with duct tape. This clearly wasn't just another sexual assault, Hinrichs thought.

Both men soon realized that their search for a missing 21-year-old college student, Romona Moore, had ended. The body Ortiz was describing turned out to be hers.

Hinrichs is the NYPD's most-decorated officer. He was once shot in the chest by a fleeing robbery suspect, and a bullet nearly took his hand off while he was trying to subdue a man nearly twice his size. He joined the NYPD 20 years ago, and he was confident that if anyone should be the lead investigator for a case as grisly as this, it should be him.

"I do good with these cases," he said.

He thrives on finding slim leads that after some digging can turn into solid evidence. Hinrichs likes a challenge, and the Moore case was going to give it to him.

A Trip to Burger King

The last thing Moore said to her mother on April 24, 2003, was that she was going to a local Burger King. When it started getting late, her mother, Elle Carmichael, figured she must have stopped by a friend's house. Moore, a quiet and bookish psychology major at Hunter College, normally called when her plans changed.