FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Man Sentenced to Die in 1989 Murder

A 33-year-old Missouri man with a history of sexual assaults was sentenced to die Friday for the murder and attempted rape of a Fountain Valley mother who was on her way home to breast-feed her infant daughter.

The judge told Timothy DePriest that the December, 1989, slaying of Hong Thi Nguyen, 26, was so cruel and vicious that the defendant deserved no mercy.

“The aggravating evidence is simply overwhelming,” said Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey.

“She was strangled, shot, treated very brutally for no reason that I can see . . . treated as though she were a piece of garbage,” he said.

Tuyen Ngo, the victim’s husband, said he attended the sentencing hearing because he wanted to be sure that DePriest received the death penalty.

DePriest is the 29th person sentenced to death row from Orange County. He also faces a life sentence plus 57 years in his home state, where he was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman and shooting a police officer.

At the time of the murder, DePriest was on parole for a rape conviction in San Bernardino County. He had been charged in a second rape in San Bernardino, but in a plea agreement with prosecutors only admitted to a robbery.

Deputy Public Defender William G. Kelley said he believes his client’s life should have been spared, in part, because DePriest is the product of an abusive, dysfunctional family.

But prosecutor Christopher J. Evans said Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi insisted the case be pursued as a death penalty matter because of the cruelty involved.