Woman Sentenced to 3 Months for Torching Restaurant

A Vietnamese immigrant who torched her Stanton restaurant for the insurance payoff was sentenced to three months in jail Monday after a federal judge heeded her tearful plea for leniency.

Nga Tuyet Nguyen, 49, faced a possible 20 years in prison after a jury convicted her of setting fire to her Au Bon Temps de Saigon restaurant, which was losing $6,000 a month.

But U.S. District Judge Robert J. Kelleher, after hearing that Nguyen had suffered lapses in judgment before a tumor the size of a tennis ball was removed from her brain several months after the crime, ordered the 1972 immigrant to serve three months in “a jail-type facility,” followed by five years’ probation.

Kelleher completed sentencing by telling Nguyen that he “hopes for the best for you.”

Nguyen had just made a tearful plea, asking the judge to give her the chance “to be the excellent mother I have always been to my (two) kids and the good daughter I’ve been to my elderly parents.”

Her attorney, A. Brent Carruth, had tried to win a new trial by presenting evidence that the tumor could have interfered with Nguyen’s perceptions.

Carruth called a psychiatrist who testified that such large tumors can cause brain malfunctions such as memory loss, loss of judgment, and “confabulation”: the urge to fill gaps in the memory with detailed but unconscious accounts of fictitious events.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Kendra S. McNally had urged Kelleher not to give probation, pointing to Nguyen’s lack of remorse and her crime “of indiscriminate violence.”

The arson was committed purely for profit, McNally insisted. Aside from the mounting business losses, McNally said “her insurance was about to expire, her loan was about to fall due, and her landlady was about to evict her.”

A co-defendant who has pleaded guilty--Diep Lam Harris, 46, of Westminster, an entertainer--testified at her April trial that Nguyen had arranged the crime. Admitting a romantic attachment, Harris, who has not yet been sentenced, said he was seduced into participating in the crime by Nguyen’s “charms.”

The most damning evidence at the trial were tape recordings made of the two after Harris had secretly agreed to cooperate in the investigation. Nguyen talked about the crime and castigated Harris for failing to take care of incriminating details.

Harris used eight gallons of gasoline to set the fire at the restaurant at 7147 Katella Ave. on Jan. 13, 1987. But people nearby noticed the fire, and one witness saw two people run from the restaurant and enter a car carrying a license plate issued to Harris.

Nguyen denied everything at the trial and said Harris was taking revenge for her decision to cut off their relationship. On Monday, she persisted, saying she still believes that “very deeply and very sincerely I am not guilty.”

She testified that she was on vacation at a Lake Tahoe resort at the time of the fire. But she had no clear explanation of telephone records showing that she had called Harris five times from Lake Tahoe on the day of the blaze.

Kelleher called the evidence of Nguyen’s guilt “overwhelming” but nonetheless said he had decided to extend compassion. The three-month sentence was “the very mildest sentence that could in any way properly be imposed,” Kelleher said.