Husband Is Guilty of Trying to Kill Man He Said Was Wife’s Lover

A jealous husband who pumped three bullets into the man he thought was having an affair with his wife was found guilty of attempted murder Thursday.

Sentencing for Henry Ngo Wu, 33, was set for Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, by Torrance Superior Court Judge John Shook. The maximum penalty is life in prison.

Wu, an El Monte real estate appraiser, stalked and shot Jonathan Baron, a vice president of CCH Computax Inc., the nation’s largest computer tax processing firm. The attack took place last April 7 in the parking lot of the firm’s national headquarters in Torrance.

Baron, 37, formerly an avid runner, is confined to a wheelchair after being shot just below the chest, in a thigh and the buttocks. He testified that he never had an affair with Wai Wu, wife of Henry Wu, who had worked for him.

There was no dispute that Wu shot Baron.

Wu’s defense admitted that Wu, who had contracted gonorrhea, thought he had gotten it from his wife and suspected Baron of having an affair with her.

Arguing that personal revenge for marital infidelity is a cultural tradition for Wu--an ethnic Chinese who emigrated from Vietnam--the defense contended that Wu sought merely to wound Baron to cause him to lose face, not to kill him.

At trial, Wu testified he wanted to shoot Baron in the genitals, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Hall.

The defense presented an expert on Chinese culture to bolster its argument. But, on cross-examination, Eugene Cooper, a USC professor of anthropology, testified that a man in Wu’s position would want to kill someone believed to be having an affair with his wife, Hall said.

“If anything, (the cultural argument) helped my case,” Hall said. “It was an uphill battle for the defense.”

In an interview after the verdict, Baron said, “I have absolutely no idea how my name got associated with this . . . because I can tell you honestly and openly that there was no affair going on. . . .

“What we have here is a jealous husband who got a crazy idea in his head and plotted for more than 14 months to take my life, totally unknown to me.”

Almost a year after the attack, Baron, whose spinal chord was partially severed in the attack, goes to therapy every day to strengthen weakened leg muscles.

“Nothing is going to bring me back to where I was,” he said.

On the other hand, the Wu relationship appears to be holding up.

At the trial, Wu’s wife invoked her spousal privilege not to testify against her husband. In a hearing out of the presence of the jury, she said the couple remains married.

Wu testified that his wife visited him every weekend in jail, Hall said.