Inmate Charged With Murder of USC Student

A state prison inmate has been charged with the murder last year of a 21-year-old USC student who had escaped the violence of Cambodia only to be stabbed repeatedly while working at her sister’s Gardena doughnut shop.

Lester W. Virgil, 28, who is serving an eight-year sentence for an assault that occurred after the Oct. 24 slaying of Soy Song Lao, was also charged with robbing the doughnut shop and with a grocery store robbery.

Prosecutors filed charges last week. Because of the circumstances of the murder, Virgil, if convicted, could face the death penalty or a life term in prison without parole, Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin Oghigian said.

Investigators linked Virgil to the crime scene through a bag and raffle tickets he allegedly left behind and information from other police agencies, said Lt. Gary Cherry of the Gardena Police Department.

As Gardena police pursued the case against Virgil, whose hometown is undetermined, they learned he was doing time at Wasco State Prison for an assault on a motel worker in South-Central Los Angeles that had occurred a few days after the Lao killing.

The city was stunned by the brutality of Lao’s death. She was stabbed about 35 times in the chest as she worked a weekend afternoon shift at the El Segundo Avenue doughnut shop. The attacker fled with about $60 from the cash register.

Lao, a Chinese-Cambodian, and her relatives escaped Cambodia’s notorious Khmer Rouge regime in 1980 in a daring dash across the border into a Thai refugee camp. They settled in California, and Lao went on to USC, where she was studying international relations.

After Lao’s slaying, and that of Khye Johnson, a 13-year-old honor student caught in gang cross-fire a few days later, the city posted $10,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of their attackers.

Both rewards expired without any leads, Cherry said. No arrest has been made in the Johnson killing.