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Sheriff's office releases new details on murders

The Associated Press

Brian Tzeo holds a photograph of himself and his wife and children. His wife, Lisa, daughters, Melanie and Pauline, and son, Cody, were killed March 12.

By Richard Gould | Hickory Daily Record

Published: March 26, 2009

NEWTON - When Catawba County sheriff's deputies arrived at a home on Gristmill Drive early on the morning of March 12, they walked into a bloodbath, according to a sheriff's office spokesman.

The two deputies who responded to Brian Tzeo's home found a considerable amount of blood on the front porch of the home and some blood on the back porch, said Capt. Roy Brown, with the sheriff's office.

911 call

The 911 emergency call was received by the sheriff's office around 7 a.m. When authorities arrived 20 minutes later, the deputies entered the home immediately, Brown said Wednesday. They discovered four bodies. Tzeo's family — wife, Lisa Phan, 40, Melanie Saephan, 20, Pauline Chao, 18, and Cody Tzeo, 4 — were all shot or stabbed to death, according to Brown. The deputies called for backup.

Sheriff David Huffman said the delay in officers arriving at the home was because of confusion on the 911 call. He said the female caller was not immediately able to give the dispatcher the exact address of the home and was asked to return to get the address, which caused the delay.

Grisly crime scene

As investigators from the sheriff's office and the State Bureau of Investigation begin arriving at the home, the crime scene was worse than some officers had experienced in their careers, Huffman has said, and the images forced some to seek counseling because of the age of the youngest victim — Cody.

Investigators think Chiew Chan Saevang, 37, of Schofield, Wis., a friend of the family, killed all four.

They think his motive was drugs and money. Saevang and his girlfriend, Yer Yang, 40, of Long View, were killed in Washington County, Utah, after a chase with law enforcement there March 17.

When investigators entered the home, they found three of the victims dressed, Brown said — Lisa, Pauline and Cody. Melanie was in her pajamas, he said. Saevang was in the home sometime between 7 and 7:30 a.m., according to witness accounts.

Investigators found Lisa's and Cody's bodies close together in the living room, Brown said. Pauline was in the kitchen and Melanie's body was found in a bedroom, he said.

It has been reported that Saevang's girlfriend, Yang, was in the home when the murders happened, but authorities said Wednesday that was not the case.

Brown said Saevang acted alone when he killed the four, and his girlfriend was not in Tzeo's house at the time of the murders.

"We have no information that she killed anyone," Brown said. "I have no information that she was in the house and participated with the murders."

Brown said the Toyota that law enforcement originally looked for had been borrowed by Saevang and was later found abandoned in Wisconsin. He added that witnesses saw Saevang at Tzeo's home March 12 — the day of the killings — then they saw him drive away from the home alone.

Providential sighting

Saevang and Yang were in his BMW when Utah authorities spotted them after the Catawba County Sheriff's Office issued a national alert for Saevang and Yang. There was no GPS unit on Saevang's BMW and no cell phone call was traced to it. Brown said it was providential that Utah authorities spotted it within seven minutes of the alert.

After authorities tried to pull Saevang and Yang over, their car crashed and their bodies were found dead from gunshot wounds, according to Utah authorities. Brown said he thinks Saevang murdered Yang after crashing his car on the Utah interstate.

"I don't think she had any idea he was going to pull the trigger on her," he said.

Catawba County authorities think she was helping Saevang make his way to California.

Brown said a SBI agent and a crime scene specialist from the Catawba County Sheriff's Office are in Washington County, Utah, assisting with the investigation there. He said he has no plans to send any officers to Wisconsin to conduct further investigations.

Motive

Saevang and Tzeo met before Saevang went to prison for opium trafficking in 2004, and Tzeo and his family helped Saevang get back on his feet after he got out of prison, Brown said.

Authorities think Saevang's motive for the killings was to steal $150,000 to $200,000 worth of opium from Tzeo's house.

Though Tzeo has admitted his part in a drug trafficking ring and is fully cooperating with police in their investigation, Huffman has said Tzeo has not been arrested because there was no evidence found in the home to link him to drug trafficking.

Search warrant

A search warrant issued for Tzeo's home by investigators found a clear plastic bag with what appeared to be a controlled substance and cash. Brown said lab results found the substance was not a narcotic.

Brown said Tzeo was not making heroin out of his home. Tzeo, he said, was selling small quantities of opium for medicinal rather than recreational use, common in Asian cultures. Brown added that converting opium to heroin requires laboratory equipment and expertise Tzeo did not have.

Brown thinks Tzeo's role was taking in small amounts of opium, consolidating them into larger portions and sending small quantities of it through the mail to Wisconsin. Addresses were in the Madison, Wis., area, not to Saevang, Brown said.

Helping authorities

Tzeo detailed his involvement in the drug trade to authorities and was cooperative with law enforcement officers from the beginning of the investigation.

"Would we have solved this case without Brian Tzeo's help? I don't think so," Brown said.

And though caught by surprise by Tzeo's sudden request to remain in California for an extra week or so because each of the four funerals of his family is conducted separately and requires two days of prayer, Brown said Wednesday he is still confident Tzeo will return.

Brown said since leaving for California last week Tzeo has been in frequent contact with the sheriff's office — two or three telephone calls a day.

Cody's funeral services are complete. Lisa, Melanie and Pauline were cremated and their remains will be buried soon, Brown said. The daughters will be buried next, followed by their mother.

"I suspect he will come right back here after the funerals," Brown said, but he's not sure if Tzeo will choose to live in Catawba County after he returns.