The tiny body in the large grey and black hockey bag was curled up in a fetal position when Cpl. Stewart Macdonald opened the zipper.

The bag was found in murky orange-coloured water at the foot of a slough embankment off Richmond's Rice Mill Road near the Massey tunnel beside the BC Ferries Dease Dock maintenance facility and a golf shooting range.

Someone had used the heavy-duty bag with its extensible handle and wheels to lug the body down a pathway used by dog owners to walk their pets.

The crime scene was an isolated park-like area with a parking lot that was sometimes used by remote-control model plane enthusiasts to fly their creations or as a discreet spot for couples to meet, Macdonald knew.

There was a gravel-like material in the bag covering the face of the victim.

The body had been in the water a long time.

It wasn't until the autopsy the next day that the victim was determined to be an adult female.

She was wearing black sweat pants and a sweater top and nothing else.

It was several weeks before she was identified as 55-year-old Elvie Ma, a Ladner resident who was reported missing by her brother.

The investigation Macdonald launched into the November 2004 discovery soon led to Charles Kembo of Surrey.

Macdonald, the primary investigator in the Ma case, was testifying Wednesday at the Vancouver trial of Kembo, who is charged with killing Ma and three other people.

The 41-year-old immigrant from Malawi is also charged with murdering his stepdaughter, 21-year-old Rita Yeung of Richmond, his wife, 44-year-old Margaret Kembo of Richmond and his business partner and friend Arden Samuel, 38, of Vancouver.

Samuel was found strangled to death in a Vancouver park in 2003. Yeung was pulled from the Fraser River near Vancouver International Airport in 2005. Yeung’s biological mother, Richmond’s Margaret Kembo was reported missing in October of 2002. Her body has never been found.

"Mr. Kembo came to light [as a suspect] very early on in the investigation," Macdonald said.

Police obtained warrants to get video from ATM machines and access to Ma bank transactions.

They also placed a motion-activated camera in Ma's South Delta apartment and a tracking device in Kembo's vehicle, a red Land Rover.

The prosecution says Kembo murdered the four people in order to profit financially from the stolen identities of his victims, using their identities to obtain credit cards, open bank accounts, set up companies and take out a life insurance policy, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Police also secretly recorded Kembo's phone calls.

One cell phone conversation played to the jury on Wednesday shows Kembo claiming that his wife Margaret had suddenly gone back to Hong Kong, hinting she may have become a nun.

She had to "follow her heart" Kembo said in the July 12, 2005 conversation.

He added he was dating someone else, a woman he described as an "hot ex-model."

Kembo was arrested a few days later at a Surrey condominium at 14377 103 Ave. after a year-long joint investigation by police in Surrey, Delta, Vancouver and Richmond.

At the time, he was living with a woman and her children.

Also known as Charlos Mathews Gwazah, Christopher Sidho, Michael Chilcoto and Crispin Banda, Kembo is a landed immigrant who was ordered deported from Canada in 1994 after he was convicted on fraud and forgery charges and served three years in jail.

However, the order by the Immigration Appeal Board could not be enforced because Kembo came to Canada in 1989 as a Geneva Convention refugee fearing persecution.

Convention refugees cannot be returned to the country of origin unless they are considered a physical threat.

A transcript of his detention hearing listed 22 identities that Kembo used to fraudulently claim welfare between 1991 and 1993.

At the time, Kembo was considered a con man with no violent convictions on his record.

The trial is expected to run into the new year.

dferguson@surreyleader.com