HOUSTON – Two capital murder suspects accused of being on the run since January were captured in Vietnam.
Harris County officials said Poly Phan and Jaiden Nguyen brutally killed two businessmen who ran an out-of-state marijuana business, then fled halfway around the world.
“Well, it took a lot of weight off of me. My wife started crying and I started whooping,” said Dante Concetto about the news of the arrest.
Concetto thinks back to January when his son, 35-year-old Dana Rysdall was killed.
“Couldn’t believe it. He was supposed to be in Texas for a few days, then he was supposed to be here with me for a week in Idaho,” Concetto said.
Rysdall never left Houston. Rysdall and his roommate, 37-year-old James Martin III, who both ran an out-of-state marijuana dispensary, were murdered in January. Rysdall was found shot to death, lying in a pool of blood inside a home on W. T.C. Jester. Martin’s duct tape-bound body was also found days later, shot to death, stuffed in the trunk of his car that had been left running in the garage.
Sources led investigators to Kathy Vu, accused of cleaning up the crime scene, as well as her boyfriend Poly Phan and accomplice Jaiden Nguyen, accused of the capital murders. Officials said Vu was taken into custody, but the two suspected killers fled to Vietnam before they could be arrested.
“We get intel through many, many sources,” said Kim Bryant who is unit manager for the Fugitive Apprehension section of the Harris County District Attorney’s office. “Law enforcement started immediately working on getting them tracked.”
She said her team and prosecutors worked diligently with the DOJ, Houston’s Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force and US Marshall’s office to coordinate with Vietnamese law enforcement who arrested the suspected killers and deported them.
“We found one of them hiding in the jungle. The other one we found in Ho Chi Minh City,” Bryant said.
With justice now on the horizon, Concetto, who plans to be at the trials, is grateful.
“These guys were in custody in five months and nine days, I believe?” Concetto said. “I couldn’t be more pleased.”
Officials said both Phan and Nguyen are US citizens and it’s unclear what connection if any they currently have to Vietnam. They’re expected to be brought back to Harris County within the next two weeks to begin legal proceedings here.