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 a 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 too. 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 rearranging his home, hiding the victims’ things, parking Ly’s car in the East Bay and lying to police repeatedly.
“Phuc Vo essentially put no effort into finding Tho Ly or Que Tran,” Knox said. “That’s because he knew they were dead.”
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