Trial Ordered in Slaying of Businessman

A municipal judge Monday ordered a Westminster couple to stand trial for murder in the slaying of Quynh Duy Nguyen, the 50-year-old Villa Park man whose body was found last month floating in a Long Beach estuary.

The decision followed a three-day preliminary hearing, during which Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas J. Borris presented witnesses who tied both Xuan Kim Lai, 37, and her husband, Hoan Ngoc Lai, 47, to the Santa Ana motel where police believe Quynh Duy Nguyen was slain Nov. 30.

Police have said that the Lais lured Quynh Duy Nguyen, a family friend and business associate, to the motel, where he was murdered in revenge for having had an affair with Xuan Kim Lai.

Judge Edward L. Laird decided that prosecutors had presented enough evidence to warrant a trial for the Lais.

Complicated Case

“The only burden (of the prosecution at a preliminary hearing) is (to demonstrate) strong suspicion, and I believe that that burden has been carried,” the judge said.

The complicated case involves charges and countercharges of revenge and questionable business dealings between the families of the accused and the victim, all of whom are Vietnamese immigrants.

Through the course of the hearing, the courtroom hummed with the steady whisper of language interpreters.

Two Vietnamese interpreters, one for each of the defendants, sat behind the Lais to translate court proceedings for them. On Friday, a Spanish interpreter accompanied two motel employees, both born in Mexico, who were called as witnesses to testify that Xuan Kim Lai had rented a room at the motel Nov. 30 and that she had led a group of men carrying a seemingly unconscious body into the motel’s parking lot.

2 Others Arrested

In addition to the couple, police had initially arrested Xuan Kim Lai’s brother, Peter Ha Nguyen, and her 17-year-old son in the murder. They were later released for lack of evidence.

Although those two have not been charged, when called to the stand as witnesses last week, both Peter Ha Nguyen and the youth declined to testify, citing their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

Quynh Duy Nguyen’s body was found late at night Nov. 30 by a teen-age gondolier plying the canals of Long Beach’s Naples district.