Transient Arrested in Woman’s Murder : Slaying: Police believe the suspect, who had occasionally stayed at the Westminster victim’s home, had planned to rob her and her husband.

Ly Van Nguyen had accepted Cathy and Henry Bui’s kindness in the past, police said.

Last Friday, the couple loaned the 39-year-old transient $100. Last year, they allowed him to occasionally stay at their Garden Grove apartment with his cousin, who rented a spare bedroom.

Late Wednesday night, after a two-day surveillance, police arrested Nguyen in connection with 28-year-old Cathy Bui’s slaying.

Henry Bui, a 36-year-old electrician at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, found his wife’s body around 6 p.m. on Sunday when he returned home from a weekend business trip. She had been strangled.

Nguyen “knew both Henry and Cathy and they had been nice to him, or tolerant of him,” said police Sgt. Mike Mittelstaedt. “They were someone he could go to for help. I wouldn’t call them friends, but they were acquaintances.”

Police said they suspect that Nguyen went to the Buis’ apartment in the 13500 block of Arizona Street early Sunday morning with the intention of robbing them.

“From what we’ve been able to piece together, it appears as though the original intent was theft and it turned into a homicide for whatever reason,” Mittelstaedt said. “We don’t know if (Cathy Bui) confronted him during a burglary or what.”

Mittelstaedt said neighbors had heard a female voice at 3 a.m. Sunday calling out, “Who are you? I can’t see,” and a male voice responding, “Don’t you remember me?”

Neighbors later told police that they heard scuffling noises but they did not report the incident at the time.

Police, who were still examining the crime scene on Thursday, said Nguyen may have entered the apartment by prying open a living room window.

Nguyen, whose last known residence was San Jose, had occasionally been staying in a room in the 8200 block of Cerritos Avenue in Stanton. Westminster officers staked out that address, hoping he would return.

About 10:45 p.m. Wednesday, Nguyen showed up at the location and was initially arrested, without incident, for a parole violation out of Santa Clara County. He was then arrested on suspicion of murder after being questioned by police, Mittelstaedt said.

Police said Nguyen had used a credit card belonging to the couple at a store in Long Beach either late Sunday night or early Monday. He was captured on videotape by a store surveillance camera, Westminster Officer Robin Capp said.

Nguyen is being held at Orange County Jail on $260,000 bail and is scheduled to be arraigned today in Municipal Court in Westminster.

The slaying was the seventh homicide in the city this year, which had five murders in all of 1992, police said.

“Seven homicides is usually a year-end total and we’re only halfway through the year,” Mittelstaedt said. “Hopefully, things will taper off.”