SANTA ANA : Jury Convicts Man of Strangling Woman

A 41-year-old unemployed computer technician who claimed he suffered from “concentration camp syndrome” was convicted of first-degree murder Thursday in the strangling of a Westminster woman who had helped him in the past.

An Orange County Superior Court jury deliberated less than two hours before finding Ly Van Nguyen guilty on the murder count, plus a special allegation that the slaying of 28-year-old Cathy Bui occurred during a burglary and robbery. He faces life in prison without parole when he is sentenced Dec. 16 by Judge David O. Carter.

Prosecutor Lew Rosenblum contended during the trial that Nguyen broke into the victim’s home in the middle of the night in June, 1993, looking for things to steal, and strangled her when she awoke and panicked. A neighbor had said she heard a female voice that night calling out, “Who are you? I can’t see,” and a male voice responding, “Don’t you remember me?”

Henry Bui, an electrician at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, found his wife’s body when he returned home from a weekend business trip.

Just a day before the killing, Cathy Bui, a bank teller, had lent Nguyen $100, Rosenblum said. She and her husband also had let him stay at their apartment with his cousin, who rented a spare bedroom.

“They were nice to him,” Rosenblum said. “They were trying to give the guy a hand.”

In his closing arguments, Rosenblum attacked defense contentions that Nguyen went to borrow money from Bui that night and killed her during a flashback to the time he was imprisoned and tortured years ago in a Vietnamese concentration camp.

“There are thousands of people who have gone through this experience. It just doesn’t give them a right to kill.”