Jun 27, 2008 11:40 pm US/Pacific
Cops Hunt 2 Men Who Knew Dead Quartz Hill Quartet
QUARTZ HILL
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Police are looking to question these two men as "persons of interest" in the murder of four people found burned beyond recognition in a Quartz Hill home Monday.
CBS
The Sheriff's Department continues to seek two men who were associated with the NASA engineer and three other people found dead in a Quartz Hill home Monday after firefighters put out a blaze.
Law enforcement identified the two men as Si Young Yoon, 34, of Lancaster, and a cousin Jae Hwan Shim, 39, of Palmdale, who police say was the ex-husband of the female adult victim and stepfather to the two children also slain.
The Sheriff's department did not officially call the men suspects in the case but continue to call them "persons of interest."
Both men were reportedly last seen leaving their homes Monday, the same day a fire occurred at 43250 N. 45th Street West in Quartz Hill that was quickly labeled suspicious by authorities.
A Sheriff's Department special bulletin described the men as "missing."
The victims' remains were found after firefighters put out the flames
about 5 p.m. Monday.
The coroner's office said the four victims were not killed by the fire. The four were beaten and stabbed.
Joseph Paul Ciganek, a 60-year-old NASA engineer who worked at the Dryden Flight Research Center on the Edwards Air Force base, is the only victim to be publicly identified.
Ciganek's body was found in a different room than the other victims -- an adult woman, a boy and a girl who shared a different surname, said Assistant Coroner Chief Ed Winter.
Ciganek and the boy had been "beaten and slashed" and both died from blunt force and sharp force trauma, Winter said.
The woman and girl suffered multiple stab wounds, he added.
Their bodies were badly burned, and it may take several days to confirm their identities through dental records, coroner's Lt. John Kades said.
A family friend, Kathy Lee, told reporters that Ciganek and his wife had taken in her cousin and the woman's two children, one of them a girl who
just had finished 10th grade.
Yoon is 5 feet 11 inches and 210 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. He was driving a 2005 silver Acura MDX with California license plate number 5PKL680.
Shim is 5 feet 5 inches and 135 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. He was last seen leaving his home in Palmdale around 5 p.m. Monday in a 1998 Mercedes E320. The vehicle had a California license plate with number 4ANZ159.
Another house fire occurred in the Kern County community of Rosamond, just north of the Los Angeles County border, about 10 hours after the Quartz Hill fire and may also have involved homicides.
"As far as we know, at this point there's no connection whatsoever" between the two fires, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of the missing men or the vehicles was asked to contact the Sheriff's Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
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