Born to Kill (15 page)

“I know,” replied
Anh hai
. “This how we gonna do it now. This new BTK. We keep moving. This way, they never catch us doing any crimes.”

Later that night, Sophia finished cooking a large pot of
pho
and the gang members sat around watching a Hong Kong gangster video on TV.

David pulled Tinh aside. Whatever ire he might have been feeling toward Tinh earlier had passed. “Here, Timmy,” he said, handing Tinh $300. “This for you. For gas.” David rested his hand on Tinh's shoulder and spoke in a grave, conspiratorial tone. “Remember. Not tomorrow but next day, meet on Canal Street and I have somebody out there to give you directions and everything, to go. This job a big one, Timmy. Big fucking job. Understand?”

Tinh nodded and stuffed the cash in his pocket. He was flattered that David was speaking to him directly, as if he were on a par with Uncle Lan. “Yes,
Anh hai
,” Tinh reassured his boss. “I be there for you.”

Three days later Tinh and the others were on the road once again, heading south along Interstate 85, which cut through the flat, industrial expanse of the eastern United States. Tinh piloted a Monte Carlo Supersport registered to David Thai's brother, with Nicky riding shotgun. Tinh's eyes were fixed on the taillights of a 1990 Oldsmobile driven by Tung Lai. In the car with Tung Lai were Kenny Vu and a gang member known as Black Phu. The two-car caravan proceeded at a brisk pace, stopping only for gas and food, as they hurried to their rendezvous with David Thai, Lan Tran, Little Cobra, and others who had already arrived in the small Southern town of Gainesville, Georgia.

By embarking so quickly on another out-of-state sojourn, the BTK had adopted a ritual familiar to young Vietnamese gangsters throughout the United States. Even before David Thai's New York gang had begun to establish itself on Canal Street, Vietnamese criminals were making their presence felt in a surprising variety of geographic locales. Unlike the BTK, most of these gangs were not operating out of a huge, thriving community like New York City's Chinatown. Most had no set base of operation. Secure in their knowledge that, as Vietnamese, they would hardly be noticed by most Americans, they roamed from state to state, city to city, preying on hardworking immigrants who were themselves existing on the fringe of American society.

On the loose in the country's vast, rambling terrain, the BTK and other Vietnamese criminals were, in a way, mimicking the kind of gangsterism first pioneered during the years of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Legendary bandits like Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger had also been intoxicated by the seemingly limitless possibilities afforded by a huge landscape divided into differing states, with separate criminal justice systems and law enforcement departments that were, if not downright hostile toward one another, sometimes less than cooperative.

Rootlessness has obvious advantages for all sorts of criminals operating in the United States, from bank robbers to serial killers. But for Vietnamese gangsters, the motivating factors were more than just practical. For most, their lot in life had been predetermined. As the residue of an unpopular war and the byproduct of refugee camps half a world away, they had no real roots to begin with. Like Tinh Ngo, most had lived unsettled lives, bouncing from foster family to foster family. Even
other Vietnamese, those who were able to live quiet, law-abiding lives, saw these troubled, transient youths as lost and lonely souls.
Bui doi
—“the dust of life”—they were called by the older, more established Vietnamese, who both sympathized with and feared the young gangsters in their midst.

By 1990, more than half a million Vietnamese refugees had arrived on United States soil since the fall of Saigon fifteen years earlier. The first to arrive were those lucky enough to get out before or soon after Communist troops rolled into central Saigon. By airlift and by sea, more than one hundred thousand Vietnamese had been transferred to safe havens in Hong Kong, the Philippines, and other locations throughout Southeast Asia where there was an American military presence. By the late 1970s, the Americans were long gone and the method of emigration became more horrific. In a three-year period, from 1977 to 1979, nearly three hundred thousand refugees fled as “boat people,” a path later followed by Tinh and many of his BTK brothers.

Of course, the majority of Vietnamese immigrants who made it into the United States did not become criminals. In fact, the relative ease with which the earliest generation of refugees adapted to American society may have lulled some U.S. citizens into thinking the Vietnamese possessed an innate ability for adjusting to alien environments. Having escaped the clutches of a victorious Communist regime bent on exacting revenge and imposing its will, most postwar refugees accepted their reincarnation as Americans with diligence. Many achieved financial success as small-business owners, and their children often excelled in U.S. schools.

But these initial refugees had come overwhelmingly from Vietnam's educated class, those with ties to the military power structure in Saigon. The boat people in the late 1970s and those who followed throughout the eighties were not so well scrubbed. They were poor and mostly from the countryside. Predominantly young males, they were set adrift by their families, a tradition known as “throwing out the anchor.” It was hoped that, as males, they would be better equipped to survive the refugee experience and find work in Australia, Canada, or the United States, then bring family members to live with them.

Arriving as “unaccompanied minors,” many young, shellshocked refugees simply cracked under the enormous pressures. Like Tinh Ngo,
they bounced from foster family to foster family. From Florida to Washington State, they dropped out of school and hung out in pool halls with other young Southeast Asian refugees. Some banded together and committed crimes, establishing links with other Vietnamese criminals in far-flung towns and cities.

By the late 1980s, wayward Vietnamese hoodlums had become associated with a particularly brutal type of crime known as “home invasions.” Home invasions were like robberies, only the perpetrators planned the crime so as to deliberately find the home's occupants within. During a home invasion a family might be tied up with electrical cord, rope, or duct tape while gang members ransacked the house looking for cash, jewelry, and electronics. Terror tactics and sometimes torture were used to coerce the victims into producing valuables like gold or expensive family heirlooms locked away in a safe.

The victims of these home invasions were always Asian—Cambodians, Koreans, Laotians, Malaysians, Chinese. Communities with large segments of Vietnamese were especially susceptible. In Southern California, where more Vietnamese immigrants reside than anywhere else in the United States, over two hundred home invasions were
reported
in 1989 and 1990, meaning maybe twice that many actually occurred. To the north in San Jose during that same period, home invasions were taking place at a reported rate of four a month.

By 1990, home invasions and other violent crimes committed against Asians by Vietnamese gangs were on the rise in a staggering variety of cities, including Houston, suburban Washington, D.C., Boston, Minneapolis, and Toronto.

Because of the nomadic nature of this unusual new breed of gangster, local lawmen around the country weren't having much luck prosecuting cases. In New York and other major cities where Chinese gangs had been around for a while, at least local cops had a frame of reference. But Vietnamese gangsters often hit in communities off the beaten track. Even on those occasions when witnesses and victims did come forward, there weren't many cops or agents with an understanding of the culture.

Like the Chinese, Vietnamese names were written with the family name first, though this was usually changed once a person settled in the United States. There were only around two hundred family names
in the entire Vietnamese language, leading U.S. lawmen to think that because there were so many criminals named Nguyen or Tran, the two most common Vietnamese surnames, the criminals were either using an alias or were all related. To add to the confusion, Vietnamese gangsters had adopted a certain patented appearance carried over from city to city that made them look strikingly similar.

In 1987, a systematic attempt to deal with the problem was undertaken by two enterprising cops outside Washington. James Badey, a Vietnam War vet and detective from Arlington, Virginia, and Detective Phil Hannum from neighboring Falls Church, were both battling an increase in crimes committed against Asians in their respective communities. In response, they started the International Association of Asian Crime Investigators, an information network they hoped would become a nexus for investigators working on all types of Asian crimes. Much to their surprise, the IAACI's quarterly newsletter soon became almost exclusively devoted to the exploits of the Vietnamese underworld, which they described as “the most rapidly expanding criminal phenomenon in the United States.”

Unlike the ranks of the BTK, who were operating mostly within New York City's highly structured criminal underworld in Chinatown, most Vietnamese brotherhoods were made up of “parasitic groups,” a term used by Badey and Hannum to describe small, roving bands of gangsters who struck wherever and whenever they wanted. As yet, there didn't seem to be any clearly defined structure that linked these groups in any hierarchical way. There was no
capo di tutti capi
, or boss of bosses. But the possibilities were disquieting. With such a vast reservoir of criminal talent, how long would it be before some strong-willed, charismatic leader had the vision to seize the reins?

Despite the efforts of the IAACI, few lawmen were paying attention to the country's growing Vietnamese underworld, especially at the federal level. At the time, the FBI and DEA were busy chasing
mafiosi
and megabuck dope dealers; they weren't likely to focus on a group of “fringe” criminals who targeted only East Asians, seemingly one of the country's quietest minorities. Even in New York's Chinatown, where David Thai was well known to cops with Asian crime expertise, there was little knowledge of the gang's out-of-state connections—which was hardly surprising. In New York, a police officer's performance is judged
on his or her local arrest rate. There was simply no impetus for NYPD detectives to concern themselves with what might be happening beyond the boundaries of the city or the state.

If they had, they might have foreseen that David Thai had big plans when it came to the Vietnamese underworld. Up to now, those plans involved occasional BTK crime sprees in disparate locales like Connecticut and Georgia, the gang's current destination. Beyond that, the stakes only got bigger. Although
Anh hai
didn't talk about it much, Tinh Ngo and the other BTK
sai lows
began to see that their leader was driven by a deep, powerful ambition. Thai knew that, even if the BTK were never to be Top Dog in Chinatown, Chinatown would serve nicely as a stepping-stone, a foundation from which he could tap into a larger criminal network of Vietnamese gangsters and racketeers scattered throughout the United States.

As far as Tinh Ngo and the others was concerned, it was a given: If anyone was going to emerge as supreme commander of America's sprawling, expanding Vietnamese underworld, it was very likely going to be their esteemed boss, Mr. Tho Hoang “David” Thai.

When Tinh and the other BTK gangsters arrived in two carloads at a Dunkin' Donuts just off Highway 129 near Gainesville, it was well past midnight. There was a whiff of juniper in the air and a stillness unlike anything the boys had ever experienced back in Chinatown. From a pay phone, Kenny Vu dialed the number they had been given by
Anh hai
. An American woman answered with a lyrical Southern accent that sounded funny to Kenny.

“David Thai there?” he asked.

“You better call back tomorrow,” answered the lady. “Everybody here's had so much to drink they fell right asleep.”

Kenny told the lady to let David Thai know they would be staying at Days Inn, located across the street from Dunkin' Donuts.

At nine o'clock the following morning,
Anh hai
knocked on the door of the motel room, fresh and wide awake. He greeted his young brothers like an eager conventioneer, instructing them to follow him to Cafe Huong, a Vietnamese coffee shop on the outskirts of Gainesville, where he bought everyone breakfast. After they'd eaten, David handed
each gang member $100. “Put this in your pocket in case you need it,” he said, playing his usual role as big brother and benefactor.

The gang members were still exhausted from the twenty-hour drive from New York City. But David already had business on the brain. “Today, we gonna check out a couple jewelry stores near Atlanta,” he told the gang.

In Georgia, the BTK contact was a lanky, rugged auto mechanic named Quang Van Nguyen. Quang served the same function as Phat Lam in Bridgeport, making up a list of local Asian establishments that looked like good robbery targets.