MARTINEZ — It has all the makings of the Laci Peterson murder case, minus the accompanying media frenzy.
A San Pablo father of two stands accused of murdering his wife and her mother simply because they became a nuisance for him. Prosecutors say that after dumping their bodies in the Oakland estuary, he simply reported them voluntarily missing, dropped his children off to live at his parent’s house, and began a search for a new romantic interest with a Facebook page advertising himself as a “fun single dad.”
But now, 41-year-old Phuc Vo is in court before a jury facing two murder charges. In front of a sparsely attended courtroom, both attorneys made their opening statements to jurors Tuesday morning, describing in detail what they think the evidence will show.
The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Mary Knox, started the trial by carefully going through the history of a police investigation that started with a report from Vo, which was only thoroughly investigated months later thanks so a helpful — but suspicious — tipster.
The body of Vo’s wife, Tho Ly, has never been found. Authorities say the body of her mother, Que Tran, washed up onshore in Oakland in April 2024, more than a month after Vo had been arrested and charged.
“Mr. Vo murdered his wife and then murdered her mother,” Knox said, for “tremendous financial gain,” via $500,000 in life insurance policies that he had on both victims.
“He rid himself of an inconvenient wife to move onto his fiancee in Vietnam,” she added.
Vo’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Paul Feuerwerker, predicted the prosecution’s case would fall apart during trial.
“There’s no confession. There’s no eyewitness to what happened to Ms. Ly and Ms. Tran. And in the case of Ms. Ly, there’s no body,” Feuerwerker said. “I’m going to ask you all to scrutinize it all very carefully…You’re going to see that an accusation is not the same thing as proof.”
Ly and Tran were reported missing by Vo on in early September, who claimed that Ly had simply walked out on him and left her own children behind because she was angry at him for buying some cabinets. A nail stylist who owned rental properties with her husband, Ly was believed to have fled to Los Angeles on her own, a story police more or less accepted when Vo reported it to them.
But three months later, police received a call from an anonymous tipster who identified herself as Michelle — but consistently used a phone associated with an Alameda woman of a different name — who inquired about the status of the investigation. A San Pablo police detective was assigned the case and started down a path that would eventually lead to Vo’s arrest, according to court records.
The prosecution’s case is a mosaic of statements from Ly’s coworkers, phone records, internet searches, surveillance footage, and Vo’s own alleged lies to police. Through this, detectives were able to establish that Vo continued to drive Ly’s Honda Fit around the East Bay, leaving it in locations throughout Oakland, while denying that he knew where his wife, mother-in-law or the car were.
From Ly’s friends — including the owner of the nail salon, herself a former San Francisco Sheriff’s Deputy — police learned that Vo and Ly’s marriage was in shambles, that they slept in separate rooms, and that Ly had caught her husband cheating on her before. When Ly brought up a divorce, Vo allegedly told her that it wouldn’t make financial sense and brushed it off.
Adding to the suspicion, Ly’s relatives told police that she was unable to drive well and relied on her husband for transport around the area, authorities said. Feuerwerker countered during his opening statement that none of these people “really knew” what was going on in the couple’s marriage.
When police asked Vo if he wanted his wife listed as a missing person, he answered affirmatively, but added, “Hopefully she’s not playing disappearance,” authorities said. When they asked why he waited a week from their fight about cabinets to report her missing, he responded that he thought she was just avoiding him and, “didn’t know she was missing,” authorities said in court filings
During the investigation, police received several calls from “Michelle,” who irked detectives’ suspicions. They believed Vo may have sent her to see if he was a suspect in his wife and mother-in-law’s disappearance and deliberately kept details from her. But the woman also provided police with relevant information and suggested they look at Vo as a suspect, authorities said.
The same day that Vo allegedly murdered Ly, he also searched online for an ice box that was big enough to fit a person inside, authorities said. Police believe he killed Ly in their San Pablo home on Sutter Avenue, picked Tran up from a residential care facility in Oakland, then killed her too.
After allegedly dumping their bodies in the water, Vo searched for things like “body Alameda point” and “Alameda body found,” to make sure his victims’ remains hadn’t been recovered, Knox said in court. Later, he searched online if a “prime suspect” could leave the country, then went on a roundtrip to Vietnam where he spent time with his new fiancee, authorities said.
Police searched Vo’s home and his parents’ home on Pullman Avenue in San Pablo, eventually locating evidence that Ly and Tran never left the area willingly. This included Tran’s medication, their passports, a citizenship application containing both victims’ DNA profiles — something Vo had claimed not to have — and Tran’s cane, Knox said.