Detective Larry Haley was the lead investigator in the January slaying of 15-year-old Dennys Guzman-Saenz, who authorities say was kidnapped in Hyattsville and brought to Gaithersburg, where he was stabbed to death and left in a creek bed.

After a four-month investigation, police arrested 10 suspects, all alleged members of a gang with connections to drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia. Haley, a Montgomery County native and University of Maryland graduate, has been with the Montgomery County Police Department since 2002.

What broke the Guzman-Saenz case?

We received a tip that someone had been bragging about doing the killing. The person wasn’t able to give a name, only a nickname, but from there we were able to figure out who [the suspect] was, and we were able to arrest him for a separate offense. He confessed, and the case basically broke open from there.