Theories Still Abound in Lam Case

In closing arguments last week in the Minh Van Lam murder trial, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James Enright said that probably as many theories still exist for what happened to slain Cal State Fullerton professor Edward Lee Cooperman as there are spots of blood dotting the tiny college office where he was killed.

That may be why, the prosecuting attorney would later concede, his office failed to get even a second-degree murder conviction in the controversial case.

Lam, 21, a Vietnamese student and friend of the professor, was convicted last Thursday of involuntary manslaughter by Superior Court Judge Richard J. Beacom in a two-day non-jury trial. Beacom reached the same verdict that nine members of the jury did during Lam’s first trial, in February. But three jurors on that panel steadfastly voted that Lam was innocent of all charges, resulting in a hung jury and second trial.

Vocal Protests

Despite very vocal protests from Cooperman’s friends and university colleagues, the prosecution offered no clear motive for the killing at either trial.

In discussing Lam’s prosecution, a veteran of the Orange County district attorney’s office was asked how many murder cases he had won in which he could not offer the jurors a motive for the crime.

“I can’t recall ever going to trial in a murder case without a motive,” he said.

Jurors at the first trial were nearly unanimous that the prosecution’s lack of motive was important to their rejection of a murder verdict. That left them with relying on Lam’s version of events and whether that version was inconsistent with the physical evidence.

Video-Taped Re-Enactment

Lam described for police what happened in a video-taped re-enactment two days after the shooting, before he even had an attorney:

On Oct. 13, 1984, a Saturday, Lam went to Cooperman’s sixth-floor campus office to return a .25-caliber handgun that the professor had loaned him. He and Cooperman had a playful wrestling session, as they usually did on Saturdays, then Cooperman loaded the gun and began to show him how to handle it. Cooperman grabbed Lam’s right arm to show him how to aim it, drawing it up to his own neck. The gun went off.

After the shooting, Lam left Cooperman on the floor without calling for help, took a girlfriend to the movie “Purple Rain,” then returned to Cooperman’s office about four hours after the shooting and placed the gun in Cooperman’s outstretched left hand (the professor was left-handed). He then called campus police and acted as though he had just stumbled onto the scene.

A short time later, however, Lam confessed his involvement.

After the shooting, two contrasting views of what might have happened competed for headlines.

Cooperman’s family and friends said within hours after his death that he was the victim of a political assassination. The other side was presented by Lam’s attorney, Alan May of Santa Ana, who said within hours of taking Lam’s case that Cooperman’s fears of political assassination may have led him to carelessly engage in a game of “stop the assassin.”

When Lam’s case finally ended last week, neither view was much of a factor.

May narrowed his argument at the second trial to the physical evidence. Enright touched on the assassination theory only to show that Cooperman was too fearful for his life to engage in careless horseplay with a gun.

Yet both Alan May and the political assassination theorists still believe their versions were an important part of the case, even if they didn’t affect the judge’s verdict.

Cooperman’s family and friends point to death threats Cooperman had received, warnings that right-wing Vietnamese hit men were going to kill him. Friends allege that such extremist groups are active in Orange County, which is home to more than 65,000 Vietnamese refugees.

Aiding Vietnam

Cooperman was aiding Communist-controlled Vietnam and favored normalization of relations with the Hanoi government. Southeast Asian leaders in past years had been victims of assassination or assassination attempts. Cooperman’s friends were adamant: Put the circumstances all together, and it must be a political assassination.

But Enright, while showing patience with their theories--he was aware that the widow, Klaaske Cooperman, shared those views--said it would require “quantum leaps” to go from the political assassination theory to evidence that could be used to prosecute someone for murder in court.

Klaaske Cooperman’s view that the prosecution ignored the assassination theory was crystallized in a $12-million civil suit that she filed just one day after the manslaughter verdict on behalf of herself and her two teen-age daughters against Lam and alleged, unspecified “others,” maintaining Lam was part of a conspiracy to kill her husband.

A group of Cooperman friends and colleagues, now loosely united under the banner of Committee for Justice for Prof. Edward Cooperman, insist Enright and his staff ignored not only hard evidence but also leads that could turn into evidence if pursued vigorously enough.

Laundry List of Errors

The Cooperman committee last week composed a list of alleged errors by the prosecution. The list includes Enright and Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen’s decision not to use a jail-house informant, 18-year-old Tuano Koivisto, at either trial. Koivisto, an auto-theft suspect, said Lam told him he killed Cooperman on orders from a former high Vietnamese official.

But Koivisto has such a history of trouble with law enforcement, and he made so many factual errors in his story, that none of his interrogators believed him. Enright said he lost interest when Koivisto said he could document that President Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Monroe.

Klaaske Cooperman said she found Koivisto believable because he said Lam referred to her husband as “Coop,” which was his nickname. But Lam referred to the professor as “Coop” in his first jail-house newspaper interview a few days after the shooting.

The Cooperman committee complains that no one investigated a missing picture from Cooperman’s office after the shooting, which showed him with a high-ranking Vietnamese official. An office computer was missing too, and Cooperman’s briefcase was found empty. Klaaske Cooperman said her husband’s briefcase was always bulging.

Jacket in Office

There was an unidentified jacket found on top of Cooperman’s jacket in his office when his body was found, the committee said. It also said that blood found by police on the fifth-floor landing and bloody footprints found in the office were not fully investigated.

The committee’s complaint list includes incomplete investigation of Lam’s claim that a Filipino man walked by in the hallway after the shooting. Also, the committee asked, why didn’t the police and prosecutors pay attention to the death threats?

“Some personnel have specific information of names of students with damaging evidence against Lam,” the committee’s list states.

It goes on: Why didn’t the prosecutors pursue inconsistencies in the bullet trajectory pattern and Lam’s account of the murder? Why didn’t anyone look into Cooperman’s contact with the FBI, including an FBI agent who recommended that he arm himself with a gun? What about Cooperman’s telling friends he wrote down the license number of a vehicle that had been following him, and Klaaske Cooperman later finding the license number of Lam’s uncle’s car on the professor’s bedside table?

Enright insists that all of the committee’s points were checked out thoroughly.

“We beat the bushes on this case,” Enright said. But nothing investigators turned up, he said, could be connected directly to Lam or be admissible as evidence.

Checking Leads

Enright said prior to the conviction that, despite the committee claims, no one had come forth who had specific information damaging to Lam. Without providing details about each allegation, Enright defended police and the district attorney’s office investigators, saying every possible lead was checked.

The prosecution did try to show that the angle of the bullet (downward and to the right) was inconsistent with Lam’s version of the shooting. But a member of the first jury, June Foley, said jurors quickly decided that the angle could have been consistent with the defense’s argument in the case.

Tony Russo, a leader of the committee and close Cooperman friend, said after the conviction that he did not doubt that Enright and his staff had made an effort to learn the truth. What concerned him, Russo said, was how thorough that effort had been and whether all leads had been explored. But Enright responded: “Our guys did a hell of a job with the evidence we had. I can understand the concern of the professor’s friends, but they never gave us anything we could use in court.”

Defense Attorney Criticized

Cooperman’s associates were not only critical of the prosecution’s efforts in the case but also of some of Alan May’s characterizations of the professor’s life style. Enright and Jensen didn’t need to criticize the defense attorney’s version of events. Judge Beacom did it for them.

Beacom accused May of turning the first trial into a circus by telling jurors in his opening statement that the evidence would show Cooperman was an embezzler and that he sent illegal, highly sensitive equipment to Vietnam. The judge also chastised May for “implying” that Cooperman was a homosexual, an implication that enraged Cooperman’s family and friends.

In the end, Beacom told May, “You didn’t prove any of those things.”

Although Enright praised Beacom after the verdict, he insists he would not have sought a murder conviction if he didn’t think a murder had been committed.

In his arguments to Beacom, he pointed to a $90 check that was in Lam’s possession when he was arrested. Lam explained that Cooperman had written him the check for $90 that day to cover some traffic tickets. However, handwriting experts have stated that Cooperman filled out the amount for the check, but did not sign it or put the date on it. Lam, in fact, admitted through his attorney that he had put the date on it himself, and May made only a feeble argument in court that Lam had not forged Cooperman’s signature.

If Lam was at all upset about his accidental shooting of Cooperman, Enright argued, would he have gone ahead and filled out the rest of that $90 check?

Explanation of Delay

May excuses Lam’s delay in reporting the shooting by saying the young man panicked, or was in shock.

May feels as strongly about his theory--that Edward Cooperman was so fearful of being assassinated that he practiced defending himself, even to the point of using a loaded gun--as Cooperman’s supporters feel about theirs.

“Dr. Cooperman’s fear for his life tragically led to his death,” May said.