Gang members to be arraigned in 14-year-old cold case

A 14-year-old cold case surrounding the execution-style murder of alleged gang associate Viet Nguyen in Costa Mesa has finally been solved, authorities said Thursday.

Three of four members of a Vietnamese criminal street gang will be arraigned in Santa Ana today for allegedly killing Nguyen after he abandoned them while committing a robbery in Huntington Beach, according to Orange County prosecutors.

A fourth man accused is in a Minnesota prison, awaiting extradition. A grand jury indicted all four Jan. 15.

The case remained unsolved for more than a decade, until the Costa Mesa Police Department and prosecutors received some new information, police said. Costa Mesa Sgt. Frank Rudisill has been a detective on the case almost since the beginning.

“It’s been a long, long road and these are extremely dangerous people. These guys have been involved in a lot of homicides, so I’m really glad to get this thing solved after all of these years and get these guys pinned down,” Rudisill said.

At the time of the killing, police were stumped, according to articles in the Los Angeles Times’ archives. Viet Nguyen was a senior at Ocean View High School, had a 3.6 GPA and was on the varsity basketball team, friends and family said during a memorial. Costa Mesa police could not figure out a clear motive for the slaying.

Over the next 14 years leads were occasionally found in the case, but they would fade. The trail would grow warmer then colder until 2006, when the chief of the District Attorney’s investigators sat down with Costa Mesa officials and decided to dedicate more time to the case.

“This was pretty much old-fashioned gum-shoe police work where you continue to go out and talk to people and talk to people and talk to people, and as they get older and get away from the gang scene and get a little more mature they become more willing to tell you things,” Rudisill said.

A nationwide search ensued with detectives interviewing sources all over the country, including some they had never talked to before, Rudisill said.

Here’s what the authorities now believe happened:

A group of five teenagers, all part of or associated with the same Vietnamese street gang, got together to commit a masked robbery at the house of one of Viet Nguyen’s high school classmates. Along with Viet Nguyen, the other four men were Anthony Paul Johnson Jr., 32, formerly of Westminster; Giang Thuy Nguyen, 33, formerly of Fountain Valley; Tam Hung Nguyen, 33, formerly of Riverside; and Truc Ngoc Tran, 31, of Santa Ana.

Viet Nguyen, Giang Nguyen and Tam Nguyen are not related, said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

Viet Nguyen got cold feet and bailed, afraid that he would be recognized by his classmate, leaving the other four to commit the crime. In retaliation for running away, the other four met at a house in Midway City that night to plan Viet Nguyen’s slaying.

The next morning Tam Nguyen convinced Viet Nguyen to drive with him in a van through Orange County in search of a drug dealer. Viet Nguyen drove while Tam Nguyen sat in the back seat. They were followed in another car by Tran, unbeknownst to Viet Nguyen.

Tam Nguyen told Viet Nguyen that he was feeling ill and Viet Nguyen pulled over the car he was driving to the side of the 73 Freeway in Costa Mesa at which point Tam Nguyen pulled out a semi-automatic gun and shot Viet Nguyen in the back of the head, killing him.

Tran pulled up behind the van carrying the executed man, at which point the assailant jumped in with him and they fled.

Solving cases that have been cold for a while is not as rare as one might think, Emami said.

“A lot of cases that are unsolved for a decade or more will be reopened for investigation and solved when new information or new technologies become available,” she said.

Part of what’s so special about this one, though, is that the indictments were not a result of new DNA evidence that fingered an unknown suspect or new technology that allowed for a more thorough crime scene investigation — it was a result of pure persistence and traditional detective work, Rudisill said.

Tran, who is charged with a felony count of murder and a felony count of conspiracy to commit murder, also faces a special-circumstance allegation of lying in wait and a sentencing enhancement for doing the crime to benefit a criminal street gang. He was arrested Jan. 17 in Santa Ana.

Tam Nguyen, who is charged with one felony count of murder and one felony count of conspiracy to commit murder, also faces a special circumstance allegation of lying in wait and sentencing enhancements for a crime benefiting a criminal street gang and the personal discharge of a firearm. He was arrested in Anoka County, Minn., and is waiting for extradition.

Johnson, who is charged with one felony count of murder and a felony count of conspiracy to commit murder, faces special-circumstance allegations of murder by lying in wait and murder to avoid arrest. He also faces a sentencing enhancement for committing a crime to benefit a street gang. Johnson was serving time in state prison on unrelated charges when he was indicted.

Giang Nguyen is also charged with one felony count of murder and one felony count of conspiracy. Nguyen also faces special circumstance allegations for murder by lying in wait and murder to avoid arrest as well as sentencing enhancements for doing the crime to benefit a street gang and crime-bail-crime for a burglary in 1994. He was also doing time in state prison when indicted.

All four face a maximum sentence of life without parole and are being held on $1-million bail. Johnson, Tran and Giang Nguyen are scheduled to be arraigned today.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].