Grisly Account of Ly Killing Believed Penned by Suspect

In graphic detail and with chilling callousness, a Tustin man charged with the stabbing death of a former UCLA student leader allegedly recounted the vicious crime in a rambling letter to a prison buddy, police documents show.

The harrowing description of the Jan. 28 slaying begins with a stunning offhand remark--”Oh, I killed a jap a while ago”--and continues with a blow-by-blow description of the death of Thien Minh Ly, a former Vietnamese Students Assn. president, on a darkened Tustin High School tennis court.

In a four-page letter filled with casual mentions of birthday plans, a friend’s new baby and the need for new tattoos, Gunner J. Lindberg may have also laid out a murder confession that led police directly to his door in their search for the killer of the 24-year-old Ly.

The Feb. 23 letter, contained in search warrant documents, fell into the hands of a confidential informant and led police to the Tustin apartment of Lindberg and his 17-year-old neighbor and co-worker, Domenic M. Christopher. Both were charged this week with the murder of Ly, who was on the high school campus practicing in-line skating when he was attacked.

Police said the ungrammatical letter reveals a firsthand knowledge of the attack that only the killer could possess, such as the fact that the victim had also been stomped, a detail contained in search warrant affidavits.

“I pulled the knife out a butchar knife and he said ‘no’ then I put the knife to his throught . . . [He was] trying to get a discription of me so I stomped on his head 3 times and each time said ‘stop looking at me’ then he was kinda knocked out Dazzed then I stabbed him in the side about 7 or 8 times,” the letter states in text bordered by gang graffiti and smiley faces.

The letter provides a startling glimpse into the mind-set of its purported author, Lindberg, a fugitive and self-styled gang organizer whose macabre account of Ly’s last moments are sandwiched between an update on his dating exploits and travel plans. The note also refers to Christopher as the latest member of Lindberg’s group, the “2/11 Insane Criminal Posse.”

“I trust him with my life, and love him as my lil brother like your my big brother,” the letter states. “He’s going to be my new protigy. I will make him just like me.”

According to the letter, Christopher cheered on Lindberg during the stabbing:

“Then Domminic said ‘do it again’ and I said ‘I already Did, Dude’ ‘ya, Do it again’ so I cut his other juggular vain, and Dominic said ‘Kill him Do it again’ I said ‘he’s already Dead’ Dominic Said ‘Stab him in the heart’. So I stabbed him about 20 to 21 times in the heart.”

In a Sunday jailhouse interview, Lindberg turned on Christopher, telling The Times that it was Christopher who stabbed Ly, using a knife the pair found on a roadside during that night’s marijuana binge. Police said earlier this week that they did not believe Lindberg, and on Tuesday prosecutors charged him as the one who wielded the knife.

Christopher denied the murder charge against him Wednesday at a juvenile detention hearing, while the youth’s father blasted Lindberg’s contentions that his son used the knife in the slaying. “Domenic never touched the knife,” David Christopher told reporters outside the juvenile courthouse.

Judge Frank F. Fasel on Wednesday ordered that Christopher remain in Juvenile Hall, and he ordered him back to court March 22 for a hearing to determine if he should stand trial as a juvenile or an adult. Lindberg is being held without bail in Orange County Jail.

Police were initially investigating the slaying as a potential hate crime. Search warrant documents show that white supremacist materials were found in the pair’s apartment, including a poster celebrating the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Investigators said most recently, though, that the crime was probably motivated by robbery.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Debbie Lloyd declined to comment Wednesday on the contents of the letter or search warrant, nor would she discuss the possibility of seeking hate-crime charges. Tustin Police Det. Tom Tarpley said his agency would not comment on the items unearthed by the warrant.

Also discovered in the search of the apartment in the 15500 block of Pasadena Avenue were a pair of blue jeans, a white tank top and a Stone Temple Pilots T-shirt, all of which appeared to be stained with blood. The search warrant documents also show that police sought permission to take blood from the two suspects to compare with a trail of blood leading away from the crime scene.

The knife has not been recovered, police said. The letter indicates that the knife was tossed alongside the Santa Ana Freeway.

While the news last weekend of the arrest of Lindberg and Christopher brought relief to Ly’s grief-stricken relatives, the family was buffeted again Wednesday by the cold, grisly description of the stabbing in the letter. Dao Huynh, Ly’s 47-year-old mother, said the letter’s tone repulsed and shocked her.

“My son was already dead, and they kept stabbing him. What would make a person do that?” said Huynh, who had broken down in tears after the stabbing when she found a poem her son had written for her. “My son will never return to me. There’s no bringing him back. . . . But I can hope that justice will be served.”

Search warrant documents note that Lindberg’s letter includes a passage quoting Ly--during the attack--as saying, “I have nothing only a key--you can have it,” an apparent reference to the house key investigators found near Ly’s body.

The presence of the key--along with knowledge of Ly’s exact wounds--was something “only a person present at the murders would know” and information “never released to the news media,” an investigator wrote.

A newspaper article about the slaying was tucked in the same envelope as the letter police say Lindberg penned. Sketches of skulls and slogans such as “Bow down to the 2/11 race” and “DEATH-DEATH” clutter the newspaper margins. The letter also contains a boastful reference to the slaying’s media coverage: “We were on all the news channels . . . having a ball in tustin wish you were here.”

The letter, pivotal in cracking the case, was addressed to a friend in New Mexico whom Lindberg had met during a stint in a Missouri prison. Lindberg served about three years in prison for the 1992 shooting of a police officer’s 11-year-old son with a BB-loaded air rifle, an attack that left the victim with a pellet lodged in his heart.

Lindberg reportedly named his “2/11” gang to commemorate his first day in the prison system for that crime, but the attack was hardly his first brush with the law. His teen years were spent in Southern California and Missouri, with stops in Arizona and Nevada, and in each locale he ran afoul of local authorities. Police said that Lindberg has tried to start “chapters” of his gang in two states.

In Missouri, Lindberg is still wanted for the alleged 1995 shotgun shooting of a rival that left the man hospitalized. He returned to California in the past year, and on Dec. 16 he was arrested in Tustin for assault and battery, search warrant documents show. At the time, he was using the name of his brother, Jerry Lindberg, who committed suicide three years ago on Gunner Lindberg’s birthday.

Lindberg’s violent reputation spurred Tustin police to bring in an Orange County sheriff’s special tactics unit for the raid that led to the arrests in the predawn hours Saturday.

“Lindberg has made threats that he will not be taken alive and will shoot it out with any police officer who attempts to send him back to the penitentiary,” an investigator stated in search warrant documents.

Times staff writers Thao Hua and Anna Cekola contributed to this report.

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Chilling Words

Excerpts from a Feb. 23 letter Tustin police say Gunner J. Lindberg wrote to a friend in New Mexico:

“Oh, I killed a jap a while ago I stabbed him to Death at Tustin High school I walked up to him Dominic was with me and I seen this guy roller blading and I had a knife, we walk in the tennis court where he was I walked up to him, Dominic was right there. I walked right up to him and he was scared I looked at him and said ‘Oh, I thought I knew you’ and he got happy that he wasn’t gona get jumped, then I hit him . . .

“I pulled the knife out a butchar knife and he said ‘no’ then I put the knife to his throught and asked him ‘Do you have a car’ And he grabed my hand that I had the knife in and looked at me, trying to get a discription of me so I stomped on his head 3 times and each time said ‘stop looking at me’ then he was kinda knocked out Dazzed then I stabbed him in the side about 7 or 8 times he rolled over a little so I stabbed his back about 18 or 19 times then he layed flat and I slit one side of his throught on his jugular vain. Oh, the sounds the guy was making were like Uhhh. then Domminic said ‘do it again’ and I said ‘I already Did, Dude’ ‘ya, Do it again’ so I cut his other juggular vain, and Dominic said ‘Kill him Do it again’ I said ‘he’s already Dead’ Dominic Said ‘Stab him in the heart’. So I stabbed him about 20 to 21 times in the heart . . .

“then I wanted to go back and look, so we Did and he was Dieing just then taking in some bloody gasps of air so I nudged his face with my shoe a few times, then I told Dominic to kick him, so he kicked the f--- out of his face and he still has blood on his Shoes all over then I ditched the knife, after whiping it clean onto the side of the I 5 freeway here’s the clippings from the news paper and we were on all the news channels.”

Source: Tustin Police Department