MARTINEZ — A jury is all set to decide the fate of a San Pablo man accused of murdering his wife and mother-in-law so he could start a new life with a woman he met in Vietnam.
Phuc Vo, 41, is charged with killing his 40-year-old wife, Tho Ly, and her 72-year-old mom, Que Tran, before allegedly dumping their bodies in the Oakland estuary. The prosecution’s case is circumstantial but seeks to prove that no one else could have made the mother and daughter disappear.
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.
Speaking to jurors on Thursday afternoon, Deputy District Attorney Mary Knox called the case a “compilation of 1,000 facts” that draws one inevitable conclusion. The evidence includes Vo’s alleged 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.”
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.
The couple frequently fought over finances, including a $1.2 million debt and Vo’s extramarital affairs, Knox said. After the killings, he went to Vietnam to meet with a new woman he planned to marry, she said.
“Tho Ly was now starting to become independent and challenge him. So he punished her,” Knox said.
She said that Tran, who was bludgeoned to death, suffered from dementia and was found wearing her daughter’s underwear. No one on earth but Vo had access to her, she said. Ly’s body has not been found.
Vo’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Paul Feuerwerker, acknowledged the two didn’t have a “perfect” marriage but said that $1.2 million debt was typical for a couple that owned four rental properties around the Bay Area, not a motive for murder. He said the DNA found in the freezer could have been explained by Ly grabbing some food that ended up in there, if it was even hers.
“If you think ‘limited support’ is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, I don’t even know what to say about that,” Feuerwerker said of the DNA evidence. He later added, “You have to accept a lot of questionable stuff and you still can’t say what happened.”
When police finally gathered enough evidence for prosecutors to charge Vo, he didn’t know he was a suspect, Knox said. But he allegedly had a “go bag” at the ready, suggesting he was planning to flee at the first sign of trouble.
“He thought he had gotten away with it,” Knox said.