Prosecutor: Tay Murder Well Planned : Courts: Prosecutor in trial for Robert Chan claims teen’s assailants dug a shallow grave the day before and rehearsed the Buena Park killing to ensure it would go off without a hitch.

Determined that the 1992 New Year’s Eve slaying of honor student Stuart A. Tay would go off without a hitch, his teen-age assailants dug a shallow grave the day before, posted a lookout and even ran through a dress rehearsal of the killing, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.

As the murder trial of 19-year-old Robert Chan got underway, the prosecutor described him as the mastermind behind two weeks of meticulous planning that ended with a young man slain in a Buena Park back yard.

“He was the one,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Lewis R. Rosenblum said Wednesday, pointing to Chan, who sat quietly at the defense table. “He was the one who orchestrated what was to happen to Stuart Tay.”

The prosecutor’s comments in one of Orange County’s most sensational criminal trials were interrupted as court ended for the day. Opening statements are scheduled to resume this morning in a case that has come to symbolize juvenile crime out of control.

The prosecution’s key witness, an 18-year-old who admitted joining in Tay’s brutal beating, is expected to testify today.

The killing stands out because both Chan and Tay, 17, were exceptional students from comfortable families who seemingly had golden futures ahead of them.

“Not only was (Tay) then beaten over and over for 20 minutes, but that wasn’t what killed him,” Rosenblum told the jury.

He said that Tay died of asphyxiation--choking on his own vomit--after Chan forced rubbing alcohol down his throat and used duct tape to cover his nose and mouth.

Chan was at one point a candidate for valedictorian at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton. His attorney, Marshall M. Schulman, has said his client was wrongly tagged as the ringleader and is expected to present the defense’s opening statement today.

Chan faces life in prison without parole if convicted of murdering Tay, a student at Foothill High School in Santa Ana who had aspirations of becoming a physician.

Three others charged in the case, Abraham Acosta, 17, of Buena Park, and Mun Bong Kang and Kirn Young Kim, both 18 and of Fullerton, will go on trial after Chan’s case concludes. A fifth youth, Charles Bae Choe, 18, and also of Fullerton, has since pleaded guilty to his role in the murder and is the prosecution’s key witness.

The co-defendants are expected to allege that Chan--the only adult among them--used fear to organize and sway the teen-agers.

But Schulman contended during pretrial motions Wednesday that Chan had feared Tay, who allegedly told his assailants that he belonged to a powerful Asian gang and was involved in counterfeiting. Chan had also believed that Acosta had already killed two other people in acts similar to the assault on Tay, involving bats, alcohol and duct tape, Schulman said.

But whether the teen-agers were simply bragging to each other, or had crossed the line to engage in criminal activity before the murder, remains unclear.

The prosecutor told Superior Court Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary that he investigated but uncovered no evidence that Acosta had committed other slayings or that Tay was a gang member. The prosecutor said Kang had previously been arrested on a petty theft charge, and said Chan, Choe and Kim had apparently cheated on their SAT tests.

A search of Kang’s home turned up photos of him flashing gang signs, but no other evidence to indicate he was a gang member, Rosenblum said.

Chan had claimed gang membership and involvement in beating up a teen-ager a few months before the slaying, the prosecutor said.

During opening statements, Rosenblum told jurors that the teen-agers bragged to impress each other, riding a trend that has made gansta rap and gang clothing the rage.

Indeed, Tay had become interested in Chan because the older teen appeared to be surrounded by this gang “mystique,” possessing the kind of “juice” to get things done, the prosecutor said.

He said most of the youths appeared to be good kids before the murder.

“Everything looked good on the outside, but there was another side,” he told jurors. “They were not angels.”

Tay met Chan by chance. Tay’s girlfriend at the time had met Chan at traffic school and set up a meeting between the two young men. But Tay used the alias Martin Gore, the name of a musician he liked, and also gave Chan a phony address and age, the prosecutor said.

Despite the tension that existed between them, Tay and Chan plotted to rob an Anaheim computer parts dealer by forcing their way into his home and tying up his family before making off with the goods.

But then Chan caught a glimpse of Tay’s driver’s license and fearing that he was an informant, Chan began plotting an “ingenious plan” to kill him, Rosenblum said.

Chan allegedly lured Tay to Acosta’s Buena Park home under the guise of buying a handgun. The night before, Chan, Acosta and Kim dug the grave, Rosenblum said.

The next afternoon, the young men held a dress rehearsal, going over how the ambush would occur and who would wield the bat, Rosenblum said.

After Tay arrived, he was handed a metal box tightly wrapped with tape--it was supposed to contain the weapon. As he struggled to open it, the blows came, Rosenblum said.