The Best American Crime Reporting 2009 - Jeffrey Toobin [91]
Oh, I killed a Jap a while ago. I stabbed him to death at Tustin High School. I walked up to him. Domenic was with me and I seen this guy Rollerblading and I had a knife. We walked in the tennis court where he was. I walked up to him. Domenic was right there. I walked right up to him and he was scared. I looked at him and said, “Oh, I thought I knew you,” and he got all happy that he wasn’t gonna get jumped. Then I hit him with one of my motherfuckers and he fell to the ground and he said in a very low voice, “What the fuck?” and “You can have whatever I got. I have nothing—only a key. You can have it.” Then I said, “You got a car.” Oh, I pulled the knife out—a butcher’s knife and he said, “No!” Then I put the knife to his throat and asked him, “Do you have a car?” And he grabbed my hand that I had the knife and looked at me, trying to get a description of me, so I stomped on his head three times and each times said, “Stop looking at me.” Then he was kinda knocked out. Dazzed. Then I stabbed him in the side about 7 or 8 times. He rolled over a little, so I stabbed his back about 18 or 19 times. Then he layed flat and I slit one side of his throat on his jugular vein. Oh, the sounds the guy was making were like “uhh-hhh.” Then Domenic said, “Do it again,” and I said, “I already did, dude,” so I cut his other jugular vein and Domenic said, “Kill him…Do it again.” I said, “He’s already dead.” Domenic said. “Stab him in the heart.” So I stabbed him about 20 to 21 times in the heart…He was dying just then, taking in some bloody gasps of air so I nudged his face with my shoe a few times. Then I told Domenic to kick him, so he kicked the fuck out of his face and he still has blood on his shoes all over [smiley face]. Then I ditched the knife after whipping it clean on to the side of the 5 freeway [smiley face]. Here’s the clippings from the newspaper and we were on all the news channels. [I’m] having a ball in Tustin. Wish you were here.
—LINDBERG IN A LETTER TO HIS COUSIN
IF LINDBERG HADN’T WRITTEN that letter describing the killing to a cousin in New Mexico and the cousin’s wife hadn’t contacted authorities, there’s a good chance the case would remain unsolved to this day.
Of course, Lindberg’s “Jap” was Thien Minh Ly.
At Tustin High, Ly wowed teachers by enrolling in advanced-placement classes in calculus, physics, Spanish, English, civics and economics—quite an achievement for an immigrant who’d known English fewer than six years. He earned an eighth-place ranking in a class of about 400. At UCLA, he served as president of the Vietnamese Student Association. In August 1995, he emerged from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with a master’s degree in physiology.
The devout Buddhist returned to his parents’ OC home to decide his next move. Friends saw that he carried a study guide to the law school admissions exam, but he also spoke about his interest in medicine. While he debated his decision, he volunteered at a legal clinic established to help poor Asian immigrants in Southern California.
“My brother was such a loving, kind person,” Ly’s sister Thu says. “I can’t describe to you the pain his death caused my family. There were so many tears. How could this happen to him? It tore our hearts apart…. He inspired me to be the best person I can be.”
Though it’s been more than a decade since the crime, Thai—Thien’s younger brother—still can’t talk about it, according to Thu, who is married with several young children and living in San Diego. She dedicated her life to her slain brother, entered the military and served four years as a naval officer in places such as Kuwait and Iraq.
“He wanted me to be a strong and intelligent woman with the courage to find my own adventure,” she told the Weekly. “I often wonder what he would think of how I turned out if he were here. Such a thought often brings both