Lam’s Taped Story of How He Shot Prof. Cooperman Shown to Jurors

Jurors watched intently Tuesday as Vietnam refugee Minh Van Lam re-enacted on videotape the shooting death of Cal State Fullerton physicist Edward Lee Cooperman.

The videotape and Lam’s first tape-recorded statement that he shot Cooperman are Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen’s prelude to his key witness, Dr. Richard I. Fukimoto, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Cooperman. Fukimoto is scheduled to testify today.

Jensen expects Fukimoto’s testimony about how Cooperman died to contradict Lam’s explanation to police that the shooting was an accident.

Lam, 21, is standing trial for murder in Orange County Superior Court in the fatal shooting of the 48-year-old professor, who died of a single gunshot wound on Saturday, Oct. 13, 1984, at his office in the Cal State Fullerton Science Building. Lam told police the gun went off by accident when Cooperman grabbed his arm to show him how to aim it.

Jensen’s witnesses Tuesday included Michael Gryzik, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department handwriting expert, who testified that Cooperman’s signature on a $90 check that Lam said the professor gave him that day was a fake.

Gryzik said he compared the check with hundreds of other checks from Cooperman’s personal and business accounts. Gryzik added, however, that Cooperman had written Lam’s name on the payee line of the check and had written in the amount of $90.

Also testifying was Stanley Slonina of the sheriff’s identification bureau, who said tests of the .25-caliber handgun involved in the shooting showed that it would fire only with direct pressure on its trigger and not from a sudden impact. Slonina also said the weapon had to be cocked for it to fire.

Lam’s attorney, Alan May, later said the fact it had to be cocked doesn’t damage the defense because his client says the weapon was cocked when Cooperman handed it to him.

Cooperman’s death and Lam’s trial have drawn international attention because of the professor’s prominence in several programs that provided scientific and humanitarian aid to the communist regime in Vietnam. His family and friends believe that he was a victim of a right-wing assassination plot because of his ties to the Vietnamese government. Lam’s attorneys have alleged that Cooperman was involved in illegal activities about which his friends were unaware.

In another development Tuesday, court records obtained by The Times showed that the prosecution obtained a letter sent by Lam to an Orange County Jail inmate about a month before Cooperman’s death.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Times staff writer John Needham contributed to this story.

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The inmate, Lao Hung Chaw, 27, has since been extradited to Texas to face an extortion charge. District attorney’s investigators believe he is a staunch anti-communist who served in the South Vietnamese navy during the Vietnam war.

In an affidavit filed with the county clerk’s office, the investigators stated that Cooperman’s associates had told police that the professor told them that he had learned two hit men--”two young Vietnamese in a white car with Texas license plates”--were out to get him.

The affidavit does not say whether Chaw is suspected of being one of the two, only that investigators were trying to determine “if there was a possible conspiracy to kill Dr. Cooperman.”

May claims he has seen the letter Lam sent to Chaw and says it should not be considered significant. Jensen has refused to comment.

The heart of Jensen’s case is Fukimoto and how the jury might contrast his testimony with Lam’s recorded statements.

Fukimoto testified at Lam’s preliminary hearing last November that Cooperman was shot through the left side of the neck at a slightly downward angle, which Jensen claims is inconsistent with Lam’s explanation that the shooting occurred while the two faced each other.

Fukimoto also testified at that time that if Cooperman were lying on the floor after the shooting, as Lam says he was, he probably could not have gotten up again. Jensen hopes to convince the jury that Fukimoto’s statement discredits Lam’s claim of an accident, since Cooperman could not then have left blood all over his desk and telephone and the wall away from where Lam said the shooting occurred.

Left Room Briefly

Lam said on the videotape that he helped the professor to the floor immediately after the shooting, left the room briefly and returned to find Cooperman in the same place where he had left him.

Defense attorney May told the jury in his opening statement Monday that he believes the evidence will show Cooperman could have gotten up from the floor and made it over to the telephone, leaving blood on the wall next to the telephone as he moved.

Jurors on Monday heard the tape-recording of Lam telling campus police he had discovered the body just after 3 p.m. that day. In the tape-recorded conversation Lam had with police about 8 p.m. that day (played in court Tuesday), Lam first said he had nothing to do with the shooting.

Fullerton Police Detective Richard Lewis testified Tuesday that he told Lam, after an hour of interrogation and with the tape recorder off, that “if this is some kind of horrible accident, tell us about it now, don’t let it go any further.” At that point, Lewis said, Lam admitted he had been lying and told them the shooting had been an accident.

Lam could be heard by jurors saying on the tape that he lied at first because “I just afraid what might happen if I stay in jail; I don’t want my future to be ruined.”

Lam said he did not call paramedics or anyone else on the telephone to help Cooperman after the shooting because “I didn’t know anything . . . . I like a crazy guy . . . . I don’t know what to do.”

Lam said that after the shooting he went outside the office to see if anyone was in the hallway to help, then came back. He got his jacket then, he said, put the gun in it, and left.

He took a friend, Helen Bai of Cerritos, to the movie “Purple Rain” but said they left before it was over because he was upset about Cooperman’s death.

Lam told police he returned to Cooperman’s office, then sat down in a chair and thought about what to do. Then, he said, he placed the gun in Cooperman’s outstretched left hand (Cooperman is left-handed). He insisted he did not do it to make it appear that Cooperman had committed suicide. Lam said he put the gun in his hand to make the situation look “less for me.” (In a jail interview with The Times, Lam said he meant that if the police found out he was involved, he wanted to show that Cooperman was involved in the shooting, too.)

The prosecution is expected to end its case this week.

The trial drew more than 50 spectators Tuesday. Cooperman’s wife, Klaaske, and her two teen-age daughters have not appeared at the trial. Neither has Lam’s mother, who reportedly is ill. However, his two sisters have been in court each day.