Cremation of Businessman Thwart’s Bid for Autopsy

A Westminster couple accused of killing a Villa Park businessman requested another autopsy of the victim Friday, but the prosecutor in the murder case disclosed that the body had been cremated.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas J. Borris told Santa Ana Municipal Judge William R. Froeberg that the defense motion requesting a second autopsy was moot because Quynh Duy Nguyen’s family had cremated him following his funeral.

Defense attorney Alan May said after the hearing that he had wanted Dr. Griffith D. Thomas, a forensic pathologist he hired, to conduct another autopsy of Nguyen to confirm the cause and time of death and determine how many people may have caused it.

May also was rebuffed in his efforts to have the bail of clients Xuan Kim Lai, 37, and Hoan Ngoc Lai, 47, reduced from $250,000 each.

In ruling against the bail reduction request, Froeberg said the Lais might flee before trial because they face sentences of 25 years to life if convicted.

Froeberg set the Lais’ preliminary hearing for Thursday in Municipal Court in Santa Ana.

The Lais are charged with strangling Nguyen, who was prominent in Orange County’s Vietnamese community, in a Santa Ana motel room Nov. 30 and then throwing his body in a Long Beach canal.

“There are so many rumors,” Borris said. “I don’t think we will ever get to the bottom of why they did it. . . . Every day I hear something new.”

A police report filed in Municipal Court provides an eyewitness account by private investigators of Nguyen’s last hours. They were hired by Nguyen’s wife to follow him because she suspected that he was having an affair with Kim Lai.

Financial, Family Problems Indicated

The 86-page report containing accounts of interviews with the Lais, along with those of the family and friends of both the accused and the dead man, indicate that the Lais and Nguyen had business dealings that may have soured about the same time that an alleged romantic relationship between Nguyen and Kim Lai attracted the attention of Nguyen’s wife and his boss, causing him financial and family problems.

According to the police report, Nguyen, 53, was the office manager of the Westminster branch office of attorney Howard Lipton of Los Angeles. Lipton told police that Nguyen, who had been a lawyer in Vietnam before coming to this country a decade ago, obtained clients for his law practice specializing in personal injury cases.

Nguyen was described as “being the best in the business” by Lipton because he brought in 80 prospective clients a month. Bringing in 10 a month would have been considered “exceptional,” Lipton told police.

Two months ago, Lipton said he noticed a marked change in Nguyen’s behavior. Nguyen cut short his Friday visits to Lipton’s Los Angeles office, where he reviewed client files. Nguyen was described by Lipton as being “in a rush, having a woman (whom Lipton in another document said he believed to be Kim Lai) in the car.”

Nguyen, who Lipton said was well paid, seemed suddenly to be short of cash and recently asked for and received a raise. Lipton added that he had learned from Nguyen’s family that much money had disappeared from Nguyen’s bank account.

Lipton said he believed that this money went to set Hoan Lai and Peter Ha Nguyen, Kim Lai’s brother, up in separate insurance offices. Peter Nguyen introduced his sister to Nguyen, and they subsequently began having an affair, Lipton said.

Lipton said he found the close relationship between Nguyen and Kim Lai strange because they were competitors in business. Kim Lai worked as the administrator of the law office of James R. Heying in Westminster. She recruited clients for Heying in the same way that Nguyen did for Lipton, according to the police report.

Lipton is quoted as saying: “What would be a better way of stealing business than to get the biggest guy in town (and) then start sleeping with him and extorting money from him (and) asking for some overflow in terms of work.”

At the same time Lipton noticed a change in Nguyen’s behavior, so did Nguyen’s wife. She hired West Shield Investigations in Newport Beach to follow her husband because she suspected he was having an affair with Kim Lai, owner Allen P. Cardoza said.

Nguyen’s wife also told Cardoza that her husband frequented prostitutes on Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove but that he did this with her approval because she was no longer sexually active.

On the night of his death, Nguyen’s wife dropped him off at 7 p.m. at a motel on Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove. He told her that he was going to meet a prostitute, according to Jesse Welch and Robin Mensch, West Shield investigators who told police that they were following Nguyen that night.

Instead, Nguyen walked down Harbor Boulevard to the Pueblo Motel in Santa Ana, Mensch told police. Mensch said that when Nguyen arrived at the motel at 7:30 p.m., he talked briefly with an unidentified man who directed him to a second floor room.

As Mensch and Welch waited for Nguyen in the parking lot, they noticed that four unidentified Vietnamese men in two cars also were watching the room Nguyen had entered. Two of these men went to the door of the room, placed ski masks over their heads, and then entered the room, one of them with a handgun.

Mensch and Welch told police that they believed that a robbery or some more serious crime was occurring, and they left because they were afraid. As they left the parking lot at 7:55 p.m., the driver of one of the cars, whom they later identified as Hoan Lai, followed them a short distance before returning to the motel parking lot.

The private investigators drove to Welch’s house, which was nearby at 17th Street and Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana, where they unsuccessfully attempted to reach their boss, Cardoza.

Then at 8:45 p.m. they called the Santa Ana police. When Mensch and Welch returned to the motel to wait for officers to arrive, they said they saw no signs of Nguyen or the Vietnamese men who had acted suspiciously.

Later that night Nguyen’s body was found in a canal in Long Beach. The Los Angeles County coroner has ruled that he died by strangulation.

In an interview Friday outside the courtroom, defense attorney May denied that Kim Lai had been involved romantically with Nguyen. He acknowledged that his clients and Nguyen had been involved in business together but said the relationship was profitable for all of them.

“My clients had no motive to kill (Nguyen),” May said. “Why would they have killed the goose that laid the golden egg?”