Phu Lam killing spree
The time frame is such that police believed he killed the family of seven at his home in the north end of Edmonton sometimes between 3:45 a.m. and 8 a.m on Sunday, not Monday, which was the day initially believed to be on which he began his killing spree.
There were two other children in the home, his own one-year-old daughter and an eight-month old believed to be the son of his wife’s sister (both of whom, his wife and her sister, he had killed). On Monday morning he dropped these two small children off at a relatives, this after the killings, not telling them anything about what he’d done. However, he was emotionally distraught and the relatives, concerned he was suicidal, called police.
At 6:50 p.m. that day, he went to a home in the south of Edmonton and shot Cyndi Duong, 37, though police do not believe he knew her. They said that Lam went to her home “in order to locate somebody who he believed would be there at that time.” It’s unclear why he killed Duong; her husband and three children were also there but were physically unharmed.
Following this last murder, Phu Lam then went to Fort Saskatchewan, about a 15-minute drive out of Edmonton. Police were looking for him and his SUV was spotted near a Vietnamese restaurant in Fort Saskatchewan where he occasionally did maintenance work, and he was found dead inside of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Threatened to kill family
In addition to murdering Duong; his wifeThuy Tien Troung, 35; and her sister, he also killed Thuy Tien Troung’s eight-year-old son (not his son), her sister’s three-year-old daughter, a male friend of her sister and his wife’s mother and father.
In 2012 Lam threatened to do just as he did: kill his family. He was angry upon learning that the eight-year-old son of Thuy Tien Troung, a boy named Elvis, was not his son. He’d had a paternity test done that verified the boy was not his.
Lam had a lengthy criminal record dating back to 1987, primarily drug and domestic violence offences. In 2012 he was accused of assault and of uttering death threats to seven persons, many of whom were among those he killed.
Thuy Tien Troung told police that he was angry about Elvis not being his son and that she believed he intended to kill them because of it. When he threatened to kill them back in 2012, she told police that he would have done so but he was unable to obtain a gun. She was granted a protection order but it lasted just two months.
Police do not know why Lam spared the life of the two young children.
