MARTINEZ — After deliberating for less than a day, a Contra Costa jury on Tuesday convicted a 41-year-old San Pablo man of murdering his wife and mother-in-law, a verdict likely to send him behind bars for life.
The jury found Phuc Vo guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Que Tran, his mother-in-law, and second-degree murder in the death of wife, Tho Ly. Jurors also found him guilty of special circumstances that make him eligible for an automatic life without parole prison sentence.
Vo reported Ly and Tran missing in September 2023, claiming that they’d simply vanished after he and Ly argued over finances. By the following March, he’d been arrested and charged with murder.
Prosecutors accused Vo of dumping Tran and Ly in the Oakland estuary. While Tran’s body was found, the remains of Ly’s weren’t.
The prosecution’s theory is that Vo killed Ly in a bedroom of their San Pablo home, picked up Tran at a senior care home in Oakland, drove her back to San Pablo and killed her as well. He may have stashed the bodies in a freezer he purchased on Craigslist later on, where DNA with “limited support” for Ly was found, authorities say.
After the killings, he went to Vietnam to meet with a new woman he planned to marry and on Facebook had advertised himself as a “fun single dad,” according to authorities.
At a trial that ended last week, Contra Costa Deputy District Attorney Mary Knox presented evidence that Vo took steps to cover up the killings by remodeling his home, hiding the victims’ things, parking Ly’s car in the East Bay and lying to police repeatedly. While he did all this, there was one glaring thing that he didn’t do, Knox said.
“Phuc Vo essentially put no effort into finding Tho Ly or Que Tran,” Knox said. “That’s because he knew they were dead.”
The investigation, ironically, started when Vo called San Pablo police to report his wife and mother-in-law missing. Authorities took his report but didn’t follow up on it for weeks, as Vo reported the two women had willingly left the area together. But homicide investigators were assigned the case after a woman called police to repot her suspicions of foul play, according to testimony at Vo’s trial.
The investigation led to several interviews of Vo, searches of his remodeled San Pablo home and a review of digital evidence around the Bay Area, demonstrating steps Vo took to move his wife’s car and hide evidence. Investigators also traveled all the way to Vietnam, where they located the woman believed to be Vo’s mistress.
In an interview, the woman — who did not testify at Vo’s trial — admitted to being in an extramarital affair and said that she’d been pregnant with Vo’s child but lost the baby months earlier. She denied the two were planning to marry, despite a detective presenting her with pictures of them dressed in wedding attire to announce their engagement, authorities said.
During trial, Vo’s lawyer argued the case was circumstantial and that authorities were propping up flimsy evidence to solve the mystery.
Tran had been bludgeoned to death and was dressed in her daughter’s undergarments, authorities said. Ly had complained to friends about Vo previously threatening her with a knife, according to testimony at the trial.
David DeBolt contributed to this report.
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