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American Detective with Lt. Joe Kenda - Season 6 Episode 5 - The Curse
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00:05they've been beaten not with fists but with something else it was a horrible way to die
00:16look at me look at me who did this to the elderly couple i didn't want to kill didn't think
00:22about
00:22killing nobody i don't know who did it it wasn't me though we weren't gonna back down there's
00:29something more to this there was something going on there someone put them up to this
00:36there's no doubt she would do this again she needed to be stopped what happens if they don't pay you
00:43he has to pay she's a mastermind of this process do not with us
00:55they touched the nerve and they know it
01:02i spent my career closing murder cases
01:07but i'm not the only one who answered the call
01:12it takes a rare breed to solve the unsolvable to catch a ruthless killer to find justice for the dead
01:23that's what it takes to be an american detective
01:32so
01:40marlene to number one hello
01:43my mother-in-law house the window is open okay so you just found that it's open is she is
01:49is your
01:50mother-in-law home i don't know because nobody picked up the phone and you don't know if they're
01:56hurt or not correct i don't know ma'am i'm afraid
02:03so i got dispatched to a welfare check saying i can't get a hold of my mom and dad
02:10when i got to the scene an entire family was out there saying please help please help
02:19the family had said that they tried the door and it was locked so i made the decision to go
02:25in through
02:26the window
02:29it's dark in there i grabbed my flashlight and i'm calling out arlington police and there was no answer
02:39there's no one in the immediate living room there's no one in the little kitchenette area
02:44the only thing that i haven't checked is a bedroom i open the door and i see the bloody handprint
02:57which led me to know that there was something in the closet that i didn't want to see
03:06there was no preparing myself for what was in that closet
03:19just a bloody massacre death is always ugly violent death is even more ugly it is profoundly evil
03:34my name is byron stewart i'm a detective with the arlington police department
03:39my major with the journalism interviewing interrogation uh learning the art of the investigation
03:46it's very important to handle high challenging cases
03:51it was june 10th 2012 i was at home i was on call and so therefore i had to respond
04:00to the crime scene at the crime scene and i was informed by the uniformed officer what she has
04:10discovered in this apartment i was initially told that there was a couple found these were elderly
04:16victims blown wind and then hung lee and stewart goes inside to look at the bodies
04:29right away i could see that the apartment was in disarray there were cds thrown about furniture was thrown
04:36about but the amount of ransacking was just so random here and there that i had my reservations
04:47entered the bedroom area it was a horrible scene the victims are covered in massive amounts of duct tape
04:56i could see that the duct tape was wrapped around their face around their ankles heavy duct tape around
05:03their hands they were pretty much helpless i haven't seen that level of violence this case was something
05:12that stayed with me for a long time that's the thing that's going to my mind how horrible was it
05:18for them
05:19there appears to be blunt force trauma to the heads of both victims they've been beaten
05:25not with fists but with something else they were fighting for their lives and ultimately succumbed to
05:33their injuries then they discovered that these killers have apparently spent time in this place
05:40i noticed that there was a table and it had a plate on it and on that plate appeared to
05:45be a marijuana
05:46cigarette and these pills that were crushed what's actually happening it just didn't look right there
05:52is something more to this one thing that we saw was a beer bottle that had a bandana around the
05:59bottle of the neck
06:00that didn't make any sense then i had to look at the demographics of the victims and they did not
06:06look to be the type of persons that would be smoking marijuana or drinking beer it could be the suspects
06:13who
06:13stayed there while these victims were dying could that be why they were shoved in a closet of course
06:21why look at this dead person while we're trying to have a good time once i walked through the crime
06:28scene i came back outside and the family was there i did ask that they uh come back to the
06:35station so i
06:36can take an official statement from them so stewart used to speak to the family member who called 911
06:44his name is chow tran and the dead people are the parents of his wife chow's wife didn't speak that
06:52much english and so chow tran quickly became the spokesperson for the family they had already
06:59been told that their parents and loved ones were deceased but they did not know the details
07:07uh chow is your first name right yes and chow uh the way this works is you know we we
07:14have to figure
07:14out who would do this you know and why they would do this the most important person in a homicide
07:21scene
07:22is the victim tell me about the victim he said they stayed to themselves they were very family oriented
07:30and that they just did not partake in anything that would warrant that any known enemies or anything
07:37like that that i don't think my mom and they have any you know yeah
07:46i met them in a vietnamese community they're very nice people everybody loved them they uh would not
07:56hug a little fly long and whole come here they work hard they immigrated here from vietnam in order to
08:04make a better life for themselves they established a sewing and garment business in arlington texas
08:13they hire chow tran because he's a relative to be the general manager my mom's the owner of the shop
08:20and i
08:20go to the to the company i get work they built this business up and by all accounts they were
08:27you know
08:28the american drink chow told me that they did specialize sewing for costumes and things of that nature that
08:36you would see in amusement parks chow tran goes on to report that they were able to achieve a contract
08:43with the disney corporation and it's going along just fine
08:502007-2008 comes around and there is a world recession disney cancels their contract and now
08:58this family is all of a sudden in deep trouble did they work yesterday at the shop no no the
09:06shop was
09:06closed closed the whole week they've been so slow okay this was an old school vietnamese family
09:14you or i might say okay we need to go and talk to a financial planner for them it was
09:20like okay we need
09:21to go talk to somebody to figure out how to get this curse taken off our family and our business
09:27he truly meant a curse in the spiritual sense of it and he was looking for ways to try to
09:33lift this curse
09:37there's a community that believes that that exists and that that can happen
09:42they even enlisted the aid of a spiritual advisor but it didn't help
09:49during my uh conversation with chow tran i tried to get as much information before
09:55the offense took place so stewart asked the standard question of chow tran when's the last time you saw
10:03your parents-in-law well last night chow said that it was his birthday and so the victims were at
10:11a
10:12chow tran's house before this offense took place and they had dinner to celebrate that
10:19we eat and you know we sit together and we play card until it's 10 o'clock when they came
10:25over
10:25everybody was happy oh everybody's happy and we joking around the story he told was this was just a
10:32normal night uh where we're getting together and having food and then they went home do you understand
10:39you have to look at family members first and and to see if anybody has some type of motive within
10:44the
10:44family okay so no one would have a reason to want to harm them in your family at all
10:51what's the problem yeah there was nothing that indicated that there was any kind of foul play from
10:59the family at all after i talked to chow i attended the autopsy to try to get some type of
11:06cause of death
11:09they informed him they did not find identifiable fingerprints but with that much duct tape it is
11:15unknown what lies beneath it i looked at both victims and i could see they had blunt force trauma to
11:22the
11:22head but according to the doctors it's not the type of uh blows that would kill him what did cause
11:30death
11:30death was asphyxia 35 feet of duct tape had been used that's an enormous amount of duct tape it was
11:41a
11:41horrible way to die to be trying to gasp for air and you couldn't get it because this duct tape
11:47is blocking
11:48your airway then that got me thinking about the crime scene one thing that we saw was a beer bottle
11:57that
11:57had a bandana around the neck i was familiar with the blue bandana and thought now maybe it's the
12:03gang member or something like that who left this there are gang activities where a calling card is
12:10left the beer bottles are wrapped in light blue racks a calling card of the gang there's an array of
12:18different gang different cultures of gangs vietnamese gangs too as well gang members can do anything
12:24anything anything is unpredictable could a vietnamese street gang engage in violent death oh without
12:33doubt they can certainly do that do not with us or this is going to happen to you only maybe
12:40even worse
12:48after the new ends were found brutally murdered
12:53detective stewart has to wonder is this a street gang seeking a street cred this bandana was a light blue
13:03type color and we did have a gang unit at the police department at the time so they did give
13:10us a possible
13:11gang affiliated with that type of color
13:19so gangs certainly are involved in home invasion robberies burglaries breaking into people's homes i mean
13:28they're not above any of that
13:36in vietnam there are gangs dating back thousands of years but the modern vietnamese gangs are just as violent
13:46in this area arlington during the 80s and early 90s were the worst play for the vietnamese gang store
13:56there is a gang problem
14:01if it was a vietnamese gang they would probably know the culture of storing cash in the house and not
14:07having cash in banks majority of the vietnamese people don't trust the bank because banking system vietnam
14:15before the world you put the money in there if something happened you have no money that's why
14:21they come in here they keep the cash in the house
14:33byron was determined that um he was going to solve this case so he's going to have to talk to
14:40gang
14:40members what he needs is concrete physical evidence that would tie someone to this crime scene
14:48that's when stewart gets a break from the crime lab
14:54they inform him they did not find identifiable fingerprints but they found something even better
15:00whoever ruled the marijuana cigarette licked the paper so it would seal and left dna behind
15:09the first thing they would do with the sample would be to run it through a database and see if
15:13it hits
15:13anybody in this particular case here we did not get a dna profile back on the person it was disappointing
15:23the fact that the dna profile is not attached to a name isn't that meaningful maybe he's never been
15:30arrested before we had no choice but to contact known gang members that we knew in the area so we
15:42started talking to them some of them were uncooperative didn't want to talk to us took a lot of convincing
15:49some gang member they speak good english but they play like i'm dumb i don't know the language
15:56they don't want to talk some of these known gang members they gave their dna as a way of you
16:03can
16:04check me i have nothing to hide we swabbed a lot of people so all those samples were ran and
16:12and each
16:12one of them came back negative i think byron had already sensed that the scene was staged
16:24those victims had no ties to any type of anything gang related that bandana was meant to lead us to
16:34gang members or to start interviewing gang members and it worked we did
16:40it so then the question is why would someone do that this is violent and very nasty it is profoundly
16:50evil so stewart is wondering where he's going to go next when he gets a phone call from an insurance
16:55company who want to know what he knows about the death of these people the insurance company need
17:02confirmation that the death actually occurred uh the manner of the death was it a suicide was it a
17:07homicide insurance companies are very thorough they're not going to pay anybody and they don't have
17:12to so stewart asked the insurance person who's the beneficiary of the payout they told me that
17:21childran was a beneficiary the insurance policy totaled around 1.8 million dollars this did catch my
17:30attention because of the amount of money 1.8 million dollars is change your life money now that gives
17:39stewart 1.8 million reasons to have a conversation with mr tran
17:49it's apparent to stewart that there are a number of things chow tran never told him
17:54why in heaven's name would new ends have a policy worth 1.8 million dollars so he needs to speak
18:01to
18:01tran and see what's going on with him
18:08when byron asked him about having life insurance taken out on the victims i believe the explanation
18:15that was given was it was for the benefit of the business chow assured me that the insurance policy
18:22was on the family because if something where they happened to the primary owners which in this case
18:27it did then they could carry on with the business this explanation is perfectly reasonable these people
18:36have built this business from the ground up to them it is their legacy for their family and they want
18:41to protect it having insurance in and of itself is not a concern of mine so that proved again to
18:48be a dead end
18:54over the next few months progress in a case comes to a stop all leads have been exhausted and we
19:01kept
19:02waiting for a possible dna profile we just don't have the person that it belongs to i truly wanted closure
19:09with this case it was personal yeah it bothered him no one wishes for that case to go cold he
19:16did
19:16everything that he could he was determined that he was going to solve this case
19:23i kept pictures of both victims on my desk as a reminder i would get other cases but this case
19:30still
19:31was that important for me that we got closure we maintained contact with chow and his family we gave them
19:38updates the insurance company had paid off on the policies something's gotta give
19:50nearly three years after the new ends were found murdered and stuffed in a closet steward gets a phone
19:56call i remember getting a call from one of my supervisors who said hey we got a dna hit
20:06and so i probably said some choice words as far as are you sure you're reading what you have and
20:14that person assured me it was from a cigarette from a 2012 case that was the break that he was
20:22looking
20:22for we were back on track as if it happened yesterday steward inquires as to who this person is
20:29that matches the dna he is a young man named willie guillery he was arrested for stealing a horse
20:38which in texas is a felony it's such a crazy way for the case to break right you know the
20:44kid
20:45steals a horse and his dna goes in the system steward has him transported by the pd in houston
20:51250 miles to the city of arlington willie was placed into an interview room and i'm watching
21:01him and he's really relaxed at the time can you explain to me what's going on first sure sure i'm
21:09the detective here in arlington can let me can i make sure i have some of your information first
21:14i just kind of got a feel for who he was and then i go into explaining our offense and
21:20what happened
21:21in 2012. we were working a homicide that occurred back in 2012. we're questioning you about it will
21:28it because we believe that you are part of this offense do you understand what i'm saying so tell
21:33us what happened uh i really do not know what happened because i have never been an arlington at all
21:38and his body language has changed he's not as relaxed as he once was when we initially started
21:44talking and i know i'm on the right track i'm telling you your dna was at the scene of this
21:51elderly
21:51couple back in 2012. now let's let's try to figure out why y'all keep blaming me i was 16.
21:57well let's
21:57figure out first how your dna got there i would never commit a murder never will i don't believe in
22:03killing people i i really don't believe in doing any of that he's very very uncomfortable at this
22:10point and uh he starts to get emotional look at me willy you need to feel comfortable telling us who
22:21did this offense i don't know who did it it wasn't me though they just put a lot of spirits
22:27on me
22:33they touch the nerve and they know it and they are on him like a new suit
22:44he starts asking for his mother he becomes almost a 15-year-old willy now but he's a grown man
22:57i want you
23:07well i need you to get up man come on those were real emotions of a person who's been caught
23:19i'm here with your man okay i'm not going anywhere with willy's demeanor and how he was acting
23:27there's just no way in the world that i thought willy by himself carried this out
23:34these bodies have been shoved into a closet when someone is fighting for their life one person alone
23:41is unlikely to be able to overcome that there's more than a one suspect in this event there has to
23:48be
23:53the patience of byron to get to this point look we know you didn't do this by yourself tell us
23:59who else was involved with this and i think that's what gave willy an out eventually
24:05during the course of talking to willy he does mention the name bobby guillery which he says is his
24:10uncle willy says he's afraid of uncle bobby he eventually says that bobby was the ringleader of
24:18this offense that started a domino effect of everything tell me more about uncle bobby willy
24:26you seem to know a lot about him
24:34dna places willy guillery at the crime scene and he places his uncle bobby there too it's enough to
24:42get a warrant to drag bobby guillery into an interrogation room i'd probably rehearse that whole
24:49interview in my head for two hours you know i anticipated the first hour he's gonna deny
24:55the second hour would be me confronting him with facts
25:01okay bobby now of course i need to explain to you everything that's going on right yes you still want
25:06to talk to me talk to you okay where we are right now how we stand right now is this
25:14willy has been arrested and he's been charged with capital murder i hit bobby with are you going to
25:20truly let him take the whole rap for this i don't look at you as a monster i look at
25:26you as a person who
25:27i believe you want to make amends you're just scared at this point he looked in my opinion like a
25:35defeated man now i'm just asking you bobby what's going through your mind as far as on willy's behalf
25:44i knew that he was ready to tell the truth now i just wanted willy to come with me so
25:50we can find
25:51this money fast and go so bobby says he heard the nuen family kept a lot of cash at home
25:57you heard from
25:59who and all of a sudden the duens come home it was dark and we started fighting and stuff like
26:08that
26:09and the next thing you know these people are dead that does not equate to wrapping 35 feet of
26:16duct tape around their heads until they suffocate so what was the pressure behind the duct tape then in
26:22european just to stop them from hollering it was clear what bobby was telling stewart was not
26:29everything he still understood that he needed to downplay his role in this he drove from houston to
26:37the arlington area to commit this offense where's the connection something's going on here someone put
26:44them up to this i believe there are other people involved you have to decide just like willie had to
26:51decide how much defense you're trying to do for them who benefited from these people definitely he had
26:57to make a decision whether or not he wanted to tell the truth and that was not happening at that
27:01time
27:02bobby refuses to name any additional players so stewart turns his attention back to willy
27:16who are they really who did this to the other people willy started opening up he'd come to
27:26the point where he he knew we had him finally he admits that they were doing it on behalf of
27:34a woman
27:35what woman what woman would that be i know it's hard but let's just tell us
27:44do you ever see a paper in the bed
27:55that's all i know about daphne daphne okay okay is daphne one of the persons
28:01daphne would do bay the real leader of it all he gave up this lady named daphne that doesn't mean
28:09anything to me at the time i don't think he knew all the intricate details of daphne so we came
28:16back
28:16to interview bobby okay so willie and i have talked very extensively on on everything okay but i do know
28:26that
28:26that daphne started this process that's when he was like you know what if i'm going down everybody's
28:33going down with me well bobby explain to me from the beginning how daphne approached you and how the
28:40situation happened they knew her because she would go there to do her business for whatever business
28:47she was doing with the lady you know the witchcraft or whatever or whatever they do
28:57okay daphne said she wanted them dead because they owed her a lot of money and she promised to pay
29:01them if they would kill them you got there did you use the key to get in yeah who can
29:09get you guys a key
29:10to that apartment daphne well then one would have to say how did daphne get the keys
29:18did she mention his name he says there's a vietnamese guy they worked with them or something
29:27chow tran is the sun alone he didn't want to give daphne that key he did that's how she got
29:34it and that
29:36was this complete and utter shock he lied to me and that uh he broke that level of trust that
29:43we
29:43established in the beginning of me thinking that he and his family uh were victims in this so no one
29:53would have a reason to want to harm them in your family at all and kill them yeah kill
29:57oh no well now that my boy is very interesting
30:08bobby and willie guillery tell a very interesting story a vietnamese spiritual advisor named daphne
30:15wright asked them to kill nuance with the assistance and help of the son-in-law chow tran
30:24here's a man that we've stopped by his house on a number of occasions assured him that we were still
30:29working on this case now we learned that he had possible involvement in this
30:37and i did make the decision to go by the home of daphne wright but we also got a search
30:43warrant for her
30:44home and we wanted to collect any evidence that we felt was relevant to the case one of the things
30:50detective stewart needs to prove is that daphne wright and chow tran actually know each other a portion
30:57of her home was an office for her clients to come and meet her there was something going on there
31:03that
31:04we wouldn't normally see in a person's house unless they're casting spills so we go in there and she
31:12have all these ledgers all these names how much money they owed her how much money was given if
31:19they still owed her daphne's spiritual gift was being a priestess to the point where she can remove
31:26curses from your business she kept books and records of all of her dealings with every person that she
31:33came in contact with everything is right down to the details it was an elaborate scheme that she had
31:41going on and then they see it there is a record of chow tran and his picture in her records
31:52i really
31:54wanted the opportunity to talk to daphne to learn more about her ability to remove curses
32:01but i also wanted to learn more about chow and how this all came to be and what her role
32:08was in it
32:10let me just ask you this just to clarify what we talked about you do know chow tran when we
32:15first
32:15move in here that's when he contacted me for his visit people come to me because they need help
32:21she's giving us this talk about how she can remove a hex and how she can grow your business if
32:27your
32:28business is not doing well but if you are superstitious you believe it to be true that the daphne
32:36rights of the world are the only ones who can speak to the duties and influence the outcome of your
32:42life
32:43she's the one that benefited out throughout this whole process money is her motivating factor she
32:50charges enormous amounts of money for this 10 20 30 000 a session that got me thinking about the
32:58conversation i had with chow and chow saying that uh we felt our business was cursed did he pay you
33:05he
33:05has to pay me okay okay what happens if they don't pay you well i can't even tell what's gonna
33:13happen
33:16but usually it's not going to be a nice thing to happen i don't have to do anything to them
33:22things
33:23just happen on its own she told byron if people owe me money i'm going to get my money one
33:28way or another
33:29give me money because i like money and you're a dumb so i'm going to take yours first because you're
33:36just
33:42too easy we eventually made the decision to get an arrest for her for daphne she was taken to jail
33:50at
33:50that time and i attempted to interview her daphne right might appear to you to be just some suburban
34:10soccer mom but when you look beyond the surface she had her own little racket going on if you didn't
34:19pay
34:19you knew something bad was going to happen to you you can tell she was very angry at the time
34:27she was defiant i'd like to know what's going on because the last time when you came down to see
34:33me
34:33i didn't even know what is really going on back then i explained to her what the nature of
34:40the uh arrest was for i if i have to make any statements or anything i'd like to have my
34:47daughter
34:47present before i told you anything so now the spiritual advisor needs a legal advisor
34:52now he hopes to talk to chow tran see if he can break him
35:01we're going to confront him about everything that we had learned thus far
35:05but instead i got a call from an attorney and i knew where we were heading at that point
35:12so now they're out of business they're not going to get a statement and they need one
35:21daphne wright is the mastermind of this process the architect of the entire crime the case against
35:28daphne was going to be you know a very difficult case to prove it's a completely circumstantial case
35:36and the risks were high that daphne could walk and so the thought was maybe if we subpoenaed chow tran
35:46and brought him in then maybe we could somehow get him on the stand in order to have chow tran
35:53testify
35:54against daphne we had to give him immunity it was a very hard decision there's no doubt in our mind
36:02that
36:02um she would do this again she needed to be stopped and if we had to use chow for that
36:09matter um
36:11it's a lesser of two evans i spent a lot of hours at the police station with stewart
36:18calling over evidence and strategizing all the way up to the start of daphne's trial
36:27during the trial chow tran says over the course of a few years the family had racked up a debt
36:33of
36:34280 000 and so chow had to come up with some kind of way to pay this money chow tran
36:42has a marvelous
36:43idea what about the life insurance chow uh knew that those are insurance policies that they have been
36:51paying on for years both chow and right determined that if they were dead the insurance could pay the debt
37:05so now who are we going to get to commit the crime because daphne wasn't going to do it so
37:11she knew this
37:12got bobby and what kind of situation is bobby in he's in the same situation that chow's in financial
37:20problems she thought if she dangled ten thousand dollars in front of him he would do anything she
37:26wanted so bobby guillory accepts the assignment but he doesn't think he can handle two people so he
37:32contacts his dim-witted nephew and willie's dumb enough to go along
37:42chow told daphne the apartment would be empty until 10 pm and gave her the key
37:58the night of the murder chow tran lured his father-in-law nguyen over to his house to
38:03celebrate his birthday all part of the plan to give the guillaries time to enter the apartment
38:11in that time frame you have willie and bobby who just sits in this apartment
38:16they were getting ready to attack him and uh and that's exactly what they did
38:22and when the nguyen's came home the guillaries were ready and the attack occurred
38:36and then they tape across their face and their mouth and eyes to the point where they couldn't breathe
38:42they had to die because insurance won't pay to live in people willie and bobby start staging their
38:50apartment to look like it's been ransacked they staged the scene to make it look like it was a gang
38:58home invasion gone bad they might have gotten away with it until willie made a fatal mistake
39:06willie couldn't get the paper to stay together so he licked it and transferred his dna onto that
39:12cigarette had he not licked that cigarette we would have never known who did this
39:23the link that chow tran had gone he knows that he needs his in-laws to come over to the
39:29house at
39:29a certain time and he needs them to leave at a certain time i often think what is chow thinking
39:35when he sees his in-laws leave the house when he knows he's looking at them for the last time
39:46i was on pins and needles with daphne's trial uh we just didn't know which way it was going to
39:51go
39:51didn't know how child's testimony was going to go
39:53the end of the day we convict daphne wright of capital murder that sentence is automatic life
40:01without parole willie and bobby were both charged with capital murder willie we made him an offer
40:08willie got 13 years on murder and then bobby got life without the possibility of parole
40:18chow's not getting any charges based on the evidence that we had it still sits with me today
40:24as i'm sitting in this chair thinking about the fact that chow tran got away with murder and that
40:31that sort of sticks in in my craw and it probably always will i can only imagine when it comes
40:38to chow
40:39the amount of guilt that has to be bestowed onto him uh just he has to live with that
40:46every day this case shows the sheer lunacy of superstition and conspiracy that people believe
40:56in falsehoods gets them grievously hurt and in some cases even dead it's unfortunate
41:04it is the way of the world but it is unfortunate
41:10on the next american detective who murdered a woman found an old boysville juvenile detention
41:19center you know who the killer is oh trust me we have something's not right about this
41:25this is where your mind is you can't put your finger on it yet but you know it's not right
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