Festival No Refuge for Police Suspects

Armed with a video camera--and a tip from an informant--three police officers and a Chicago-based FBI agent are tracking a murder suspect at the Marian Days festival.

It’s a “cloak and dagger” operation, says Houston police investigator Al Lotz. Each time officers approach, the suspect gets lost among the festival-goers, changing his identity with a change of clothes.

Finally, he is apprehended near a statue that depicts Mary leading Vietnamese to freedom and safety.

With Tuan Quoc Nguyen, 20, of New Orleans--a.k.a. “Trouble”--in custody, Lotz is happy.

“Three years in a row,” he says. Three years in which arrests have been made here. In recent years, Vietnamese gangs have become a problem nationwide; police know that every year gang members show up at the festival.

Two years ago, it was a triple murderer from Memphis. Last year, two men wanted in Louisiana for robbery were caught. The arrest of Tuan Quoc Nguyen, charged with shooting a man in a fight over a woman, culminates a joint effort by law enforcement agencies in Carthage, Houston and Chicago.

An event that attracts up to 40,000 celebrants of Vietnamese descent might seem an unlikely place for a Vietnamese murder suspect to show up. But, reasons Carthage Police Chief Ed Ellefsen, “If you were wanted for murder in L.A., would you worry about coming to Carthage, Mo.? . . . in the Ozarks, where the cops don’t know anything, anyway?” he adds, grinning.

Police are uncertain whether the suspect is a Vietnamese gang member, but the festival does attract gang members from the South, Midwest and West Coast.

For the most part, Ellefsen adds, they come just “to have a vacation and girl-watch and drink beer.”

But, alert to the possibility of criminals preying on other Vietnamese, police have set up checkpoints at the festival. By festival’s end, Ellefsen says, 10 handguns and “a number of knives” have been confiscated.

At the police command post, a display with photos and descriptions of “most wanted” youths attracts passersby. The lineup includes Siny Van Tram--street name, “Toothless Wah,”--wanted by Boston police on five counts of murder.

Investigator Lotz has come to Carthage on his own time, at his own expense, in his role as president of the International Assn. of Asian Crime Investigators, a group that includes police from Los Angeles and Orange counties.

He explains that the festival is a “neutral site” for gang members, who apparently have a gentlemen’s agreement to leave one another alone here.

In general, he says, they like to go places where there is no Asian population and people tend to buy into the stereotype of all Asian-Americans as industrious and hard-working.

“Take a good look,” he says, nodding toward a red Toyota Celica pulling in. Its occupants wear dark glasses. In the back of the car is an enormous speaker. Some of the young men sport a hairstyle popular with Vietnamese gangs: close-shaved on the sides, long in back.

Lotz smiles and says: “A lot of these guys are Buddhists. You know they aren’t here for any Catholic retreat.”