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A Murder in the Family

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A Murder in the Family A Murder in the Family Behind the tragic death of a prominent Viet couple BY SAUNDRA SAPERSTEIN AND ELSA WALSH Washington You are my baby," Nam Tran Tran Van Chuong told her then-60-year-old son one evening in tbe summer of 1986, kissing his hand at the dinner table. It seemed a portrait of tranquility, after years of upheaval, for this prominent Vietnamese family. Here in Washington, the parents -- a former ambassador and his wife -- appeared reconciled with their long-wandering son. In a Roman villa, their youngest daughter, the famous, Madame Nhu (Tran Le Xuan), was safely exiled, and another daughter was teaching at a small North Carolina college. One week later, on July 24, the mother and her husband, Tran Van Chuong, lay dead, crumpled one atop the other in their bedroom. Their only son, Tran Van Khiem, was arrested and accused of their murders. The charge of patricide and matricide, a charge that Khiem vehemently denies, shocked the Vietnamese and diplomatic communities. "The end did not match the beginning," said Khiem's sister Lechi Oggeri. "For such beautiful lives, it should have been a beautiful end. The more you tell about the glories of the past, the more horrible the end becomes," In passionate public letters and a six-hour telephone interview from St. Elizabeth's Hospital here, where he is being examined by psychiatrists, Khiem has talked of a global conspiracy that has come to focus on him. And he has alleged a conspiracy of a more intimate nature as well. Khiem said his sister Oggeri and her sons-in-law have conspired to paint him as a murderer to gain control of his parents' $650,000 estate. From her villa outside Rome, Madame Nhu has come to ber brother's aid, charging in a telephone interview that her sister Lechi (pronounced Leechee) Oggeri has been "excited" by "agents provocateurs." Oggerl's husband, Etienne, said of Khiem, "He is a mad dog barking. And we don't want to bark back." Everyone in Hanoi, the haut monde, knew that Tuesday "was the day of Madame Chuong's salon," Oggeri recalled of the days when she was growing up. It was a particular honor to be invited to Madame Chuong's, for she was famous for her beauty. When Ngo Dinh Diem became prime minister in 1954 and then the nation's president in 1955, Chuong was named Vietnam's ambassador to the United States. His wife became Vietnam's permanent observer at the United Nations. Their daughter was married to Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, who many believed was the power behind the president. Her saber-tongued comments won her the name, "Dragon Lady." Half a world away in Washington, Chuong and his wife, cultured and dignified, were deeply concerned about growing reports that their dream of a free South Vietnam was disappearing under the oppressive hand of Diem and their daughter, who were cracking down on their opponents and restricting individual freedoms. In August 1963, Chuong and his wife, in pro test of the Catholic Diem's brutal clashes with Buddhists, resigned. Madame Nhu, in a countercharge, claimed that her parents were fired for conspiring to overthrow the Diem regime. She publicly called her father a coward. Along with the political chasm dividing the members of the family, there were several intrafamily feuds, one of which centered on Khiem's sister Lechi. Many in Vietnam believed that legislation banning divorce, introduced by Madame Nhu, was aimed directly at Lechi, who wanted to obtain a Vietnamese divorce and marry a Frenchman. When Lechi refused to be deterred, the Frenchman was arrested and expelled. Lechi slit her wrists and drove to the palace complex. She says she never intended to commit suicide; it was an attempt, she says, to impress her sister with her plight. Etienne Oggeri, Lechi's husband who now lives with her in North Carolina, says that he was wrongly arrested and expelled and that his wife was virtually imprisoned in the hospital. He says it was a conspiracy by Khiem, who wanted to control Lechi's fortune. One year later, on Nov. 2, 1963, while Madame Nhu was traveling in the United States, her husband and President Diem were assassinated. Madame Nhu left the United States to live in exile in Rome. Only Khiem remained in Vietnam, a political prisoner jailed for the next three years. Khiem, the only son, played a minor role on the public stage occupied by the rest of the Tran Van Chuong family. "My brother was not satisfied, "said Tran Van Do, Chuong's brother, who now lives in Paris. Chuong, he said, was upset with his son's apparent lack of success, his failure to get a regular job, his two divorces. When Madame Nhu summoned her brother in 1954 to be a palace spokesman, the family hoped that Khiem would join the family ranks in more than name. It was not to be. After leaving the spokesman's job, Khiem worked as a lawyer and served in quasi-government positions for the next several years. He said he was appointed to the national legislature and assumed a position on the board of directors of the strategic hamlet program, a plan to isolate peasants from the communist Viet Cong. In telephone conversations and letters, Khiem repeatedly described these roles as pivotal. "I was an important man," he said, comparing his position to that of U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. Khiem lived an extremely comfortable life during his sister's reign in Saigon. Servants, a Mercedes and driver, tiger shoots, women -- all were at his disposal. Former CIA director William Colby recalls frequently "chatting" with Khiem at the local horse riding club where Khiem was president. The good life for Khiem suddenly shattered, though, in 1963 when he was imprisoned for three years after the coup. In 1968, Khiem moved to Washington to live with his parents. Khiem, then in his 40s, enrolled in law classes at George Washington University and completed a translator’s course at Georgetown University but family members .and friends say Chuong and his wife became disgruntled. Once again, their son was focusing his energies on women and parties; they were supporting him, and academics and finding a job took a poor second place. On April 6, 1972, the Washington Post published a letter from Khiem criticizing the sending of American troops to Vietnam. ". The letter devastated his father. Chuong ordered his son to leave, and Khiem, who missed his old life in Paris, returned willingly. "I was fed up with the U,S.," Khiem said. 'I was an important man,’ the son claims In 1977, Chuong and his wife wrote new wills, replacing 1969 wills that bequeathed a house in Vietnam to Khiem. In the new wills, Oggeri got the entire $650,000 estate. The 1977 document, witnessed by, a lawyer and their housekeeper, did more than disinherit Khiem. It said: "Khiem bad behaved most of his life like an exceptionally ungrateful and bad son, and has been too often to his parents a great source of worries and deep sorrow. Such behavior cannot be forgotten and forgiven, in a traditional Vietnamese family." The telephone call to Khiem in Paris came on Christmas Eve 1985. Madame Chuong was calling from Washington. Would Khiem come home, she wanted to know, to care for her and his father? They were old and sick and needed him. "At the beginning it was all right," Etienne Oggeri said of Khiem's arrival at the family home. "He had respect for his mother and father. Then Khiem started to talk politics, try to impress (his father) .... Khiem said Diem was right. The father said the regime was rotten, a dictatorship. They were fighting, fighting, fighting." Khiem, of course, has his own recollections of; those months. They "adored," he said of his parents. On July 23, the night before the ambassador and his wife were found dead of asphyxiation, Madame Chuong made three quick calls to Oggeri, according to court records. At 9:19 p.m., she called to tell her daughter that there had been "a strong argument" at dinner, then abruptly hung up, saying she believed that someone was listening on the line, according to public documents filed by the prosecutors. One minute later she called again, the documents state, telling Oggeri that life in the house with Khiem "was unbearable. Your brother is very disrespectful. Very violent. And we cannot stand it." At dinner that night, Khiem "had been hitting at an imaginary person, as though he was slapping someone in the air in a threatening manner. Madame concluded, 'And I am afraid for your father.’ The final call came at 9:56 p.m. This time she sounded "less frightened, more in control," the documents state. She explained that she had told Khiem to go back to France, that she and his father would increase his $300-a-month allowance to $500. According to the documents, Madame Chuong then told her daughter, "And now, he seems to be appeased." Oggeri says that Madame Nhu tried to get her to change her version of the night's events. The prosecution's theory of the deaths rests on one simple notion: greed. Shortly before he killed his parents, Khiem discovered that he had been disinherited in the 1977 wills, former prosecutor William Pease told a District of Columbia Superior Court hearing Commissioner. Faced with no job and little money Khiem destroyed the original wills, prosecutors believe; an empty manila folder marked "wills" was allegedly found by police in the parents' home.
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