‘He’s a killer’: Families reject shooter’s apology as Wichita’s longest capital murder prosecution ends
A Sedgwick County judge on Wednesday ordered a Wichita man to spend life in prison with no parole eligibility for killing his girlfriend, her daughter and her future son-in-law more than eight years ago — ending the longest capital murder prosecution in Wichita since Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994.
Vinh Van Nguyen, 49, pleaded guilty on Nov. 2 to one count of capital murder in the shooting deaths of 45-year-old Tuyet Huynh, 20-year-old Trinh Pham and 21-year-old Sean Pham, who were murdered on June 24, 2014, in the southeast Wichita home they shared. Police responding to a frantic 911 call from Trinh Pham found Nguyen in the home with the bodies, a semiautomatic handgun and blood on his hands.
The only other person alive was the Phams’ infant son, who had been sleeping in a crib.
Prosecutors say Huynh was ending her relationship with Nguyen, and he killed her in a fit of rage then quickly shot the other two that night, possibly to silence them. Authorities discovered Huynh dead in the master bedroom of the home, along with Nguyen, and more than 20 spent cartridges, according to statements given in court during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing. Sean Pham’s body was in the hallway, and Trinh Pham was found dead in a basement closet, where she likely sought refuge from Nguyen’s rampage. Police found nine cartridges near her.
All had been shot multiple times.
Nguyen — in lengthy, sometimes animated comments relayed to Judge Kevin O’Connor through a Vietnamese-speaking interpreter — claimed he “lost control” of himself and lashed out at Huynh when she didn’t answer his phone calls.
He said he turned on Sean Pham when the 21-year-old intervened in an attempt to prevent an argument.
Turning at times to directly address the family members and friends of Huynh and the Phams who packed the courtroom gallery, Nguyen begged repeatedly for forgiveness, saying he “did something crazy” but hadn’t been a criminal before that June night in 2014.
The family members, when it was their turn to address the court, rejected his apologies and explanations as self-serving.
“Vinh Nguyen is a killer. He’s not human,” Huynh’s father, Hao Huynh, told the judge in Vietnamese, translated through the interpreter.
“He has to be away from society. He is very dangerous,” he said.
The loss and pain of the slayings linger today, especially in Huynh’s surviving children and the Phams’ infant son, now-elementary aged, who was raised by relatives, other family members said in court.
Nguyen “killed all of us, softly, slowly,” said a sister of Huynh’s, adding that “every day is torture.”
“I see (my grandson) every day. It’s a big loss. He doesn’t deserve . . . to go through life without his parents,” Sean Pham’s mother, Le Pham, told the judge, alternating between speaking in Vietnamese and English.
Nguyen “took their lives without thinking twice,” she said.
“He doesn’t even deserve to sit in this room with us.”
When the judge asked for the state’s sentencing recommendation, Sedgwick County Assistant District Attorney Justin Edwards said “there’s not a lot that the court can consider” since life in prison without parole is the sentence required by law.
Tim Frieden, a lawyer on Nguyen’s defense team, told O’Connor that his client was “well aware” and “accepting” of the punishment.
“I simply ask that you sentence him according to the law,” he said.
The sentence caps Sedgwick County’s longest capital murder prosecution to date, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said Wednesday after O’Connor imposed the life sentence — the only one available under Kansas law for a capital murder conviction reached through a plea.
Prosecutors had long planned to seek the death penalty for Nguyen if his case made it to jury trial. Prior to November’s plea, there had been one scheduled for spring, although more postponements were likely.
But Bennett said Wednesday that Nguyen’s lawyers approached his office with a plea proposal and after extensive discussions with the victims’ family members, they felt a prison sentence where Nguyen would never have a chance at freedom again was the right resolution — given the amount of time the case had languished unresolved already and the lengthy appeals that would come had a jury convicted and recommended execution, among other issues.
“Achieving any sort of finality for our victims, for our victims’ families, at some point becomes paramount,” Bennett said.
The last time the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office tried a capital murder case where it asked jurors to impose a death sentence was in 2008. After jurors couldn’t reach a unanimous decision about execution, a life prison sentence was imposed.
The last death sentence that came out of Sedgwick County was in 2004, but that defendant, Douglas Belt, died in prison in 2016, waiting for his appeals to play out. There have been no state executions in Kansas since 1965. Kansas reenacted a death penalty law in 1994. Nine men are currently on death row.
Bennett said Wednesday that to date, Nguyen’s has been the longest capital murder prosecution Sedgwick County has seen.
Nguyen’s sentence was imposed 8 1/2 years “to the day” of the murders, O’Connor said Wednesday from the bench. He acknowledged that the families’ wait for justice has “been too long” and said he wished he “could wipe away” the pain of acts that have “no explanation, excuse or mitigation.”
“It has been 8 1/2 years, but now is the time for the defendant to face judgment for the senseless, brutal murders of Tuyet Huynh, Trinh Pham and Sean Pham,” he said.
“His day of reckoning has arrived.”
Nguyen’s plea agreement eliminated his right to appeal his conviction and sentence. Because he is not eligible for parole, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
In addition to being incarcerated, he must pay $5,000 to the state fund that reimburses violent crime victims for certain expenses.
But Nguyen will not be responsible for paying more than $29,000 in restitution sought by an insurance company collector for property damage to the house where the murders happened because his lifelong prison sentence makes that “unworkable,” the judge ruled.
This story was originally published December 14, 2022 at 5:07 PM.
