Police Trying to Determine Veracity of Group’s Letter

Garden Grove police said Thursday they were trying to determine the veracity of a letter claiming responsibility for the fire that killed magazine publisher Tap Van Pham this weekend.

In Montreal, police said they intend to reactivate their investigation of fires at two offices there because of the letter.

The letter, ostensibly from a group called the Vietnamese Party to Exterminate the Communists and Restore the Nation, is postmarked San Jose and was received by at least two Vietnamese-language newspapers and several business owners in Orange County Wednesday. It was dated Aug. 9, the day of the fire in which Pham died.

The Garden Grove offices of Mai, the Vietnamese-language entertainment magazine Pham published, were destroyed, the letter says, because Pham accepted ads from firms suspected of being pro-Communist. However, the letter makes no mention of an intention to kill Pham, who died of smoke inhalation in the blaze, according to preliminary autopsy reports.

Garden Grove Police Sgt. Phil Mason said the letter is being taken seriously. But, he added, investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the sender is just “one guy sitting in his front room at his typewriter causing all types of confusion.”

The letterhead gives the party’s name in Vietnamese and lists its initials as VNDCHQD. The letter claims responsibility for several other acts of violence and warns of acts against “the Vietnamese Communist cadres and their lackeys.”

The letter also referred to previous “declarations” by the party in which it claimed responsibility for other acts of violence. Among those were the killing of two Vietnamese in San Francisco: Duong Trong Lam, 27, head of a Vietnamese youth center, and Pham Thi Luy, 66, wife of the of president of the Associated Vietnamese Community. Luy’s husband, 72-year-old Nguyen Van Luy, was critically wounded in the same attack.

“It seems that the letter is well constructed,” Mason said. “It’s got a lot of details, but we have yet to confirm them.

“We haven’t been able to talk to any other police organizations as to whether they have received any of these letters or are familiar with this group.”

In addition to the Garden Grove fire, the letter claims responsibility for two deaths in San Francisco, for an assassination bid in Westminster and for the Nov. 23, 1985, firebombing of the offices of Vinamedic Inc. and Laser Express in Montreal.

FBI spokesmen in San Francisco said Thursday that they had not heard of the group before, but Sgt. Pierre Genereux of the Montreal arson squad confirmed that in November, 1985, offices in the area the letter mentions were damaged by fire.

The letter refers to Vinamedic, Laser Express and a third Montreal company, QTK Express, as being pro-Communist.

The three firms advertise a service through which immigrants living in the United States can transfer money or goods to relatives in Vietnam. The firm promises to use the clients’ money to buy goods and ship them to Vietnam, where addressees receive them and either keep them or sell them for a guaranteed price.

Critics said, however, that the firms are Vietnamese government fronts.

Genereux said the fires in Montreal were considered accidental at the time they occurred. He said Thursday, however, that the investigations will be reopened in view of the fire Sunday in Orange County.

Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also are investigating the Garden Grove fire. “We are pursuing it as a violation of the federal anti-arson act,” said David Troy, special agent in charge of the bureau’s Los Angeles office.

Evidence Collected

Troy said his agents have collected from the scene “some materials left behind by the person who started the fire.”

Fred Regan, FBI spokesman in Los Angeles, said his agency is not involved in the investigation.

“We are aware of the case and are monitoring it, but we haven’t opened an investigation,” he said.

Regan declined to say why the FBI is not getting involved or exactly how it is monitoring the case.

Mason of the Garden Grove police said investigators have been told Pham received a letter threatening retribution if he printed an ad placed by Vinamedic Inc.

“But we’ve searched his personal papers from his office, which is also his home, and so far we did not find any such letter,” Mason said. He added, however, that the search has not been completed.

Mason would not confirm or deny published reports that large quantities jewelry and cash were found in Pham’s office.

Police quoted Pham’s secretary as saying Pham had visited her home Saturday night a few hours before the fire. Pham had been drinking, so the secretary’s husband suggested he stay the night rather than drive home, police said. Pham declined.

Mason said he does not know how intoxicated Pham may have been because blood tests have not been completed.

But, Mason said, even if Pham were drunk, it would have little bearing on the case: “I do not think it would make a difference one way or the other. It’s not like he was so drunk he knocked over a lamp and caught the whole place on fire. . . . I believe this was the act of others.”

Times staff writer Jane Applegate contributed to this article.