Bite Marks Bring Verdict of Murder : Justice: Man convicted of strangling his ex-girlfriend in Garden Grove. The prosecution contended she bit him on the thumb in the struggle.

SANTA ANA —  After months of police investigations and days of courtroom testimony, the evidence that ultimately linked Hank Thuc Nguyen to the strangulation murder of his former girlfriend boiled down to a pair of tiny bite marks on his left thumb.

A Superior Court jury found Nguyen guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday for the Oct. 24, 1990, slaying of Tina Pham, a 42-year-old mother of three. Nguyen faces 25 years to life in prison when he is sentenced June 28.

“There wasn’t a plethora of evidence,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson, who prosecuted the case. “It came down to the bite marks.”

Robinson had contended in court that Nguyen was a “spurned lover” who killed Pham because he was angry she had ended their relationship. But as the 43-year-old building contractor started to strangle Pham, she managed to bite down on his thumb, scarring him with what turned out to be the most damaging evidence against him, Robinson said.

Initially, police believed that Pham, who was found dead on the bathroom floor of her Garden Grove apartment, died of a heart attack because there were few signs of a struggle or of forced entry into her home. Heart medication she had been taking was found nearby. But an autopsy later determined the cause of death was strangulation.

Pham’s family quickly led investigators to Nguyen, telling police that he continued to telephone and follow her even though they had ended their relationship six months earlier.

When Garden Grove detectives Ron Shave and Dave Dierking went to question Nguyen several days after Pham’s death, they noticed that he seemed nervous and had a wound on his thumb, which was subsequently photographed, Robinson said. Nguyen was arrested three months later.

In an explanation that was videotaped by police and shown in court, Nguyen said that on the day of Pham’s death he was shopping at a hardware store, where he pinched his thumb on a bucket handle, Robinson said. Nguyen presented sales receipts from the store and had his mother testify to support his alibi.

During the trial, both the defense and the prosecution called expert odontologists to testify about the apparent bite marks.

Skip Sperber, a forensic odontologist from San Diego who had once testified in a trial for serial murderer Ted Bundy, said the wounds on Nguyen’s thumb were consistent with bite marks from Pham’s teeth. However, he said he could not positively say the bite marks were made by her and not another person.

The defense’s expert, Greg Golden, also a forensic odontologist who works with the San Bernardino coroner’s office, said the wounds were not significant enough to determine that they were bite marks. He added that the marks appeared to be consistent with those made in an accident as Nguyen claimed.

Robinson also called upon two of Nguyen’s former girlfriends from San Jose who testified that he had assaulted them after they ended their relationships with him.

“Mr. Nguyen looks like a Vietnamese diplomat,” Robinson said. “He’s gentle and kind when they’re going out with him, but he snaps when they try to break up.”

In the end, it was the two marks on the defendant’s thumb that swayed the jury.

“Guilt and innocence was fairly simple (to determine) after we saw (pictures of) the bite marks,” said juror Doug Wilson of Seal Beach.

Nguyen’s attorney, Barry Otto Bernstein, said after the trial that he thought the evidence against his client “was very circumstantial.”

Although Pham’s family had been active in supporting the investigators working the case, none of them attended Wednesday’s proceeding.

Pham was born in Hanoi and fled Vietnam by boat to Indonesia. She joined family members in the United States about 1980. About five years later she divorced her husband but remained on good terms with him, sharing custody of their three children, ages 15, 13 and 9, relatives said. Since her death, the children have stayed with her ex-husband, Robinson said.