Police Believe Woman Was Victim of Strangling : Investigation: A murderer, not heart attack, probably killed a hairstylist whose body was found at home, Garden Grove police say.

As her children and relatives said funeral prayers for 42-year-old Tina Pham last week, Garden Grove police said they believe that the hairstylist found dead in her apartment 10 days earlier was strangled.

“In all probability, she was murdered,” said Garden Grove Police Sgt. Phil Mason. Police have a suspect but have not made an arrest because the coroner has not yet ruled the death a homicide, he said.

Several relatives went to the Bayport Street apartment Pham shared with another family late on Oct. 24 after she did not show up for work and then failed to pick up her 9-year-old son after school. They opened the locked door to her bedroom and found her lying on the bathroom floor with the television still on. There were no signs of a struggle.

Because heart medication was also found in the apartment, police and relatives at first assumed that the pretty, athletic woman had died of a heart attack. However, a routine autopsy conducted the next day found bruises on her neck and internal damage consistent with strangulation, Mason said.

Pham’s teen-age son and other relatives said Pham had ended a relationship with a boyfriend several months ago, and sometimes hung up on him when he called. Despite the medication found in her apartment, Pham’s brother-in-law, Van-Hung Truong, said she was in good health and had recently taken up tennis. She also exercised at a Garden Grove health club about three times a week, according to the club owner.

According to Mason, the coroner will not rule on the case until toxicology tests are completed, which could take three weeks. Mason and Detective Ron Shave, the investigator, said a suspect has been questioned and has agreed to give a blood sample, which is also being analyzed.

“We’re pursuing it as a homicide although the pathologist has not officially classified it as a homicide,” Shave said.

“She was a very pretty girl,” said Linda Tran, owner of Elegant Cuts & Perm, the Harbor Boulevard hair salon where Pham had worked part time for about five months. “Everybody here loved her.”

Born in Hanoi, Pham fled Vietnam by boat to Indonesia, and joined relatives in the United States about 1980, Van-Hung Truong said. She was divorced about five years ago, but the couple remained on good terms and shared custody of their three children, ages 15, 13 and 9, relatives said.

“She had lots of friends because of her job,” said her nephew, Henry Troung. “She was really friendly. She didn’t have any enemies.”

Besides working at the beauty salon, Pham also did volunteer work in the refugee community, relatives said.

“I just saw her a couple of weeks ago, and she said she was happy,” said Pham’s aunt, Kim Dang. Pham had recently returned from a trip to Thailand and Hong Kong, and told her aunt she wanted to return to travel and do volunteer work in Southeast Asia.

“She said she wanted to go back to Vietnam to help the orphans,” Dang said. “So we think this is not a normal death. It’s terrible.”

About 50 friends and relatives gathered Friday for a Buddhist funeral service, but relatives said Pham’s two younger children were too upset by their mother’s death to attend.

“We think it is an unnatural death, so the spirit is still around in this world,” said Dang. “So we pray and read the (sutras) for her . . . to help her soul go on.”