Born to Kill

by T. J. English

  That was clear on the tapes, in the language the gang members used to underscore their subservience to Anh hai. When referring to themselves, individual gang members always used em, a Vietnamese word used like the pronoun I when speaking with someone older and wiser. It connotes a deference based partly on age, but is also used to show respect for a person’s power, financial wealth, or superior intelligence.

  David Thai certainly had been successful in getting his BTK minions to view him as cao so, a man who was “highly destined.” But Albert knew that Thai’s appeal went even deeper than that.

  Long before the U.S. military created a generation of refugees by first ravaging and then abandoning Vietnam in 1975, the Vietnamese people had come to see themselves as the inevitable victims of a cruel fate. Over the ages, the history of Vietnam had been marked by turbulence and torment, by terrible natural and human forces unleashed against helpless individuals. Many times, typhoons had devastated the densely populated delta and coastal regions of north and central Vietnam. Just as often, the people were victimized by military regimes who inflicted misfortune on the populace in the name of ideology.

  After conquest and despite numerous rebellions, the Chinese, the French, and the Americans lorded over the country for one thousand years. With few exceptions, native rulers were also tyrants, adopting and maintaining a Chinese-style system designed more for repression and suppression than to deliver justice to the people.

  In the face of such a tortured history, the Vietnamese have come to see themselves as the victims of an evil karma, an identity most eloquently encapsulated in an epic poem written two hundred years ago, known to Vietnamese throughout the world as The Tale of Kieu.

  Written by Nguyen Du, a poet and Confucian scholar, The Tale of Kieu is the story of a young woman cast adrift by her family who is compelled to endure many hardships, including being forced into prostitution. Central to Kieu’s tumultuous journey through life is the concept of oan, a word for which the nearest equivalent in English is “wronged.” Throughout the poem, Kieu is forced into submission by circumstances beyond her control. Ultimately, she prevails because she is able to endure.

  For many Vietnamese, The Tale of Kieu has served as a cultural Bible and window to their soul from the time it was published in the late eighteenth century. The poem is still taught in Vietnamese schools and many of its 3,254 verses have been memorized by young and old, peasant and scholar. For refugees living in exile in various parts of the globe, the poem holds a special significance. The very term Viet-Kieu, used to describe itinerant Vietnamese scattered throughout the world, was derived from Nguyen Du’s masterpiece.

  For those who have felt the sting of abandonment, The Tale of Kieu contains a powerful unifying message. Whether they see themselves as victims or survivors, all Vietnamese refugees have been severed from the land of their ancestors. Like Kieu, they have been compelled to serve false masters, to do things they otherwise might not have done were it not for the cruel demands of fate. To face horrible odds, to suffer, to toil in misery—these are all essential aspects of the Vietnamese refugee experience.

  From what he had heard from Tinh and seen for himself, Albert Trinh knew that David Thai was a man who understood the power of mythology. When he first gathered his BTK brothers at the Japanese restaurant more than two years ago, he’d used the phrase Con kien cong con vua—“By sticking together, the tiny ants can carry the elephant.” The ant was a powerful metaphor to most Vietnamese, many of whom viewed themselves as tiny, insignificant entities in a large, uncaring cosmos.

  Certainly, Thai was promising his BTK brothers strength in numbers, an opportunity to forge an identity for themselves in the midst of a hostile environment. But he was also promising something more—much more.

  At the gang’s first big sit-down, Anh hai referred to their mission as being part of a larger “journey.” By doing so, he was knowingly evoking the mythology of The Tale of Kieu. A generation older than his followers, Thai recognized that Tinh Ngo and his generation had no roots. Severed from all sense of country, culture, or family, they yearned for something—anything—to reconnect them with the culture that had shaped their lives, but one they had hardly any tangible relationship with beyond the sweet, hazy memories of childhood. By calling on his young BTK brothers to join him on a journey through perilous waters, David Thai was offering them a chance to reconnect. He was giving them something that seemingly no one else could: an opportunity to fulfill their destiny as Vietnamese.

  In the weeks since he’d gotten to know Tinh, Albert Trinh had come to feel that it was his mission to offer his young Vietnamese brother a counter-myth to the one offered by David Thai. When transcribing the tapes, Albert deliberately worked Tinh hard, hoping to show him the value of diligent, sustained labor. When they walked around the ATF offices or stepped outside to get lunch, Albert noticed that Tinh slunk around with his head down, like a timid mouse.

  “Timmy, you walk like a defeated person,” Albert pointed out. He admonished Tinh, telling him, “Stand up straight. When you speak with a person—I don’t care who—look them in the eye.”

  Later, Albert offered more words of advice, simple words that were, nonetheless, a revelation to Tinh. “Be proud of who you are,” Albert told the young refugee. “You’re as much a citizen of this country as anybody else.”

  Even though Tinh liked and respected Kumor, Oldham, and the other investigators, they could not offer Tinh what Albert did. As their relationship developed, Tinh was able to express his fears to Albert about carrying the tape recorder. He was able to relax with Albert in a way he never could with his American overseers, no matter how friendly or understanding they might be.

  In turn, the relationship was good for the investigation. Throughout July, as Tinh and Albert labored over the tapes, Tinh took a greater interest in the case, asking Albert and the others pertinent questions about arcane matters of law. He began alerting the investigators about upcoming events and conversations that he knew would be crucial.

  “You know, Albert, I glad to be working with someone like you,” Tinh said out of the blue one afternoon.

  Albert did not ask Tinh to elaborate, but he took the phrase “someone like you” to mean a Vietnamese brother, one who possessed something Tinh had found to be so elusive since coming to the United States: a sense of self-worth.

  Once, Albert accompanied Tinh to midtown Manhattan’s boisterous Penn Station, the railway hub located underneath Madison Square Garden. To explain his hours away from the gang, Tinh had constructed a fake cousin who supposedly lived outside the city. On this particular morning, Tinh had told his gang brothers he would be visiting his “cousin” when, in fact, the investigators had made arrangements for him to stay at a house in New Jersey for a few days as a brief respite from the pressures of gang life. Tinh purchased his ticket, then sat inside the station with Albert, waiting for his train to board.

  Frenzied commuters hustled up and down escalators and across the terminal’s expansive linoleum floor. Over a loudspeaker, a voice bellowed departure notices and a long litany of obscure towns where the trains would disembark.

  Albert and Tinh sat quietly, enjoying their moment of calm isolation amid the swirl of activity; enjoying each other’s company in a way that made conversation unnecessary.

  Seated under bright fluorescent lights deep in the bowels of Penn Station, Albert was struck by the irony. The United States government had flown him all the way from Los Angeles so that Tinh Ngo would have someone with whom he could speak Vietnamese. And yet, the times he and Tinh felt the most comfortable was when they sat together peacefully as Viet-Kieu, saying absolutely nothing.

  “You know what I think?” Eddie Tran asked his gang brothers, seated at a large circular table at Kinh Do, a crowded Vietnamese restaurant. “I think the way Anh hai talks to me is very short-tempered. I don’t know why.”

  Tran was keeping his voice low. David Thai and his wife, Sophia, were seated at a table not far away.
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  “I don’t know about you guys,” Eddie continued, “but that’s the way he is with me. And I don’t fucking know what the fuck I did. I don’t fucking know.”

  From his seat across the table from Eddie, Tinh Ngo leaned closer, trying to adjust the microphone in his breast pocket without anyone noticing. “Who? Mr. Thai?” Tinh asked Eddie Tran.

  “Yeah,” Eddie answered.

  “No,” replied Tinh. “He don’t say nothing bad about you. There’s nothing.”

  Tinh and Eddie were seated with three other gang members, Hawaii Dat, Lam Truong, and Mui Pham, a gang member known as “Number Ten.” It was early in the afternoon, and the BTK brothers were seated among the restaurant’s usual patrons, a collection of middle-class Asians and well-heeled white folks.

  The Kinh Do restaurant was located just beyond Chinatown’s traditional boundaries, in the trendy Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo. Behind a wood facade with large front windows, the restaurant’s interior was bathed in a pastoral greenish blue. There were plenty of mirrors, and dominating one whole wall was a mural of a typical, palm-tree–laden beach somewhere along the coast of Vietnam. Slightly more upscale than most Chinatown establishments, Kinh Do was famous for its Vietnamese “summer rolls,” a tasty concoction of vermicelli, shrimp, chopped onions, and lettuce in a rice-paper wrapping.

  The restaurant hadn’t been open more than a few months before the gang made its first business call. Kinh Do’s owner initially balked at paying tax money. Then a BTK gang member got hold of his home phone number and made a threatening personal call, which seemed to do the trick. More recently, the gang had adopted Kinh Do as a sort of new headquarters, one certainly more appealing than Pho Hanoi, the tiny, sweaty luncheonette in the rear of the shopping mall where they used to meet.

  “So that’s Anh hai’s chick?” Eddie Tran asked, nodding toward Sophia. Since Eddie had just gotten out of prison recently, he was somewhat out of touch.

  “It’s Anh hai’s chick,” Lam Truong answered, stating the obvious.

  Eddie Tran smiled. “You know, when I come out of jail, she look so smooth.”

  “Maybe you misunderstood,” Tinh observed. “Did you want to court her?”

  The others laughed at the idea of Eddie Tran mistakenly putting the moves on David Thai’s wife.

  “Well,” Eddie answered, “I said before she was smooth. Now, because he used her too much …” Eddie left the sentence hanging and laughed out loud.

  Just then, David Thai approached, and the gang members all quieted down. Standing at the table, just over Tinh’s shoulder, Anh hai said hello and asked his gang brothers if anyone had court dates pending.

  “No,” Tinh answered firmly. “No court date yet.” He could feel his heart pounding faster. Tinh had secretly recorded conversations with David Thai before, but they were always over the phone, never in person.

  “I still have to go to court,” Eddie Tran butted in.

  “Oh?” asked Thai. “When you are booked, you use a false name, right?” The use of bogus Vietnamese names to fool the police was a standard gang practice.

  “I used a false name but it didn’t work. After three minutes, they discover my identity.”

  Tinh forced out a laugh. “One time,” he offered, “the computer showed me with something like eight names. Eight false names came out.”

  David Thai chuckled and the others laughed.

  For another few minutes, the gang members continued chatting amiably. Lam Truong noted that quite a few veteran gang brothers were scheduled to be getting out of prison over the next few weeks, an occurrence David Thai welcomed.

  “These new Canal Boys now are so shy,” lamented Thai. “Very timid. No one train them. I tell them to leap to the other side, they walk slowly, slowly, slowly.”

  Tinh Ngo, Eddie Tran, and the other “veteran” gang members nodded knowingly.

  “We must act to strengthen our group,” Anh hai continued. “We must revive our economy.”

  There were more eager nods of agreement all around.

  “You guys know how it is, you’ve been living at this so many years. All I ask, if you are going to [do a job], then hit a big one, you know? Be visionary a little bit. That’s all—be visionary.”

  While David Thai was regaling his minions with words of encouragement and inspiration, across the street from the restaurant, Detective Bill Oldham stood on the sidewalk. Positioned on the far side of a small lot filled with shrubs, flowers, and other inventory from a nearby plant store, Oldham waited patiently for the BTK gangsters to emerge, a 35mm camera in hand.

  Thirty minutes passed before David Thai, Sophia, Tinh Ngo, and the others walked out of the restaurant and stood for a few minutes near Thai’s silver Jaguar, which was parked at the curb. As traffic zoomed by, Oldham raised his camera and snapped a dozen photos.

  He watched Tinh Ngo walk to a nearby street corner and pretend to use a pay phone. After a few minutes, Tinh returned to the group.

  Ten minutes later, after the BTK gangsters had split up and gone their separate ways, Oldham strolled across the avenue and stopped at the pay phone. There, resting on top of the phone box, the detective found what he was looking for: a near-empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes with a mini-cassette tape inside, just as he and Tinh had planned. Oldham marked the tape “8-2-91: Kinh Do restaurant.” Later, he would drop it off at ATF headquarters, where it would be placed in the bureau’s evidence vault with the twenty or so other mini-cassette recordings Tinh had made.

  In recent days, Oldham and the other investigators were paying even closer attention to the gang than usual. They’d gotten wind of at least two major crimes the BTK had in the works, and they were digging for more details. The investigators first learned about one of the crimes five days earlier, during their July 27 surveillance of the gang on Canal Street.

  While the other gang members were making extortion collections, Lan Tran had pulled Tinh aside in front of the Asian Shopping Mall. “We are preparing for something different,” Uncle Lan told Tinh, “something profitable. We are preparing to rob a big watch company. We’re waiting for the Italians, so we can collaborate. We let them act like police officers, then we follow them and steal the goods.”

  “Oh, oh, oh. You mean, they pretend to be FBI?” Tinh asked Lan excitedly.

  “Yeah. You and me be together in one group. They got two companies for us to rob at once. But don’t let anyone know at all. Just hang out for now and say nothing.”

  The investigators were intrigued by this strange robbery plan Uncle Lan had mentioned, though they weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Was Lan Tran really suggesting that the BTK was going to collaborate on a robbery with a group of Italians? “Italians” as in Cosa Nostra?

  While the investigators were still scratching their heads in wonderment, Tinh Ngo received a phone call from David Thai initiating another intriguing crime. At first, Anh hai told Tinh little, other than that he was planning a “job” in Chinatown, and he wanted Tinh to select two apprentice gang members to help.

  There wasn’t much the investigators could do except encourage Tinh to solicit more details. In the meantime, they followed the gang members everywhere—to David Thai’s new suburban home in Melville, Long Island, to Canal Street, and to the gang’s new headquarters, the Kinh Do restaurant.

  On August 3, 1991, the day after detective Oldham snapped pictures of the gang in front of the restaurant, the investigators heard more.

  “Dan, you know that job I tell you about?” Tinh asked Agent Kumor over the phone that afternoon.

  “Yeah,” answered Kumor.

  “It’s a bombing.”

  “A bombing!” Kumor repeated, startled by the prospect.

  Tinh still hadn’t been told much. Following his usual pattern of telling Tinh only what he needed to know at the time, David Thai had said simply that the BTK would be delivering a bomb to a restaurant in Chinatown.

  The investigators were concerned. Very concerned. There had alrea
dy been a bombing in Chinatown a few days earlier, near the front entrance of a Chinese restaurant on Mott Street. A small explosive device had been detonated, shattering glass and damaging a wall. Luckily, no one was nearby at the time.

  There had been no warning beforehand. Neither the restaurant owners nor the local cops had any idea what the bomb was about. When Dan Kumor asked Tinh, he didn’t know either, though it sounded a lot like something David Thai might have planned.

  The investigators were beginning to worry. Was this the beginning of a terrible new extortion technique on the part of the BTK?

  Kumor told Tinh to keep them posted. Again, there was little they could do except keep key members of the gang under constant surveillance.

  Two days later, on the evening of August 5, Kumor was beeped by Tinh. When he called back, Tinh uttered in hushed tones, “Dan, I can’t talk on the phone. Maybe you come meet me.”

  Thirty minutes later, Kumor and Oldham picked up Tinh on a street corner in Sunset Park and drove to a stretch of Third Avenue near Red Hook, a burned-out Brooklyn neighborhood of deserted warehouses and empty, rubble-strewn lots. They turned onto a side street and parked. Even in the middle of nowhere, Tinh slumped down in the backseat so he couldn’t be seen.

  He had startling news: “This morning David Thai come by and give me the bomb.”

  “What kind of bomb?” Kumor asked.

  A homemade bomb, Tinh said, one that Thai claimed to have assembled himself. Inside a glass jar, Thai had wrapped what looked to Tinh like a stick of dynamite in foil. Packed tightly around the dynamite were hundreds of small nails.

  Tinh told the investigators that he’d found two volunteers to deliver the bomb. The target was Pho Bang—an appropriately named restaurant under the circumstances—located right next door to the Chinese restaurant where the other bomb had been detonated.

  “When’s this supposed to happen?” asked Oldham.

  “Right now,” said Tinh. “Soon as I get back to the apartment. Two gang brothers waiting for me.”

  “Jesus,” Kumor exclaimed, trying to get his thoughts together. “Okay, look, here’s what we’re going to do …”