A judge has sentenced an Alabama man to death for killing four young children by tossing them from a bridge.________________
Circuit Judge Charles Graddick handed down the death sentence Thursday to Lam Luong.
UPDATE, March 19, 2009: Alabama bridge baby killer guilty
AP NewsAlert: A jury has convicted a man of murdering four children tossed from an Alabama bridge in 2008.
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UPDATE, March 17, 2009: Mother of Children Tossed Off Bridge Says Father 'Kept Laughing'
The Vietnamese mother of four young children tossed to their deaths from an Alabama coastal bridge testified Monday that her common-law husband laughed when he told her that the children — then reported missing — would never be found.
"He kept laughing," Kieu Phan, 23, told jurors at Lam Luong's capital murder trial.
Phan burst into tears when color photographs of the children were flashed on a screen for jurors. Prosecutors said they will seek a death sentence if Luong is convicted.
...Phan, whose testimony in Vietnamese was interpreted by a translator, said Luong at first told her he had left the children with a woman in Bayou La Batre. By 7 p.m. when they didn't return, she went to police and began a frantic house-to-house search.
Days later, when his story came under scrutiny and he was taken into custody, Luong had officers bring Phan to his jail cell to tell her: "They are all dead," according to her testimony.
"No way that we can find the children," she said he told her. "He kept laughing." She fell to her knees and cried, police testified.
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UPDATE, March 5, 2009: Lam Luong Pleads Guilty
Lam Luong pleaded guilty Thursday afternoon to throwing his four children off the Dauphin Island Bridge. Luong also said he wants the death penalty._________________
"From the day they died, I no longer want to live," Luong said.
Luong was in court for a change of venue hearing. His attorneys claim the story got so much media attention that their client can't get a fair trial in Mobile County.
Judge Charles Graddick will still have to rule on the motion, despite Luong's guilty plea. Because this is a capital murder case, there must be a trial. The guilty plea will be entered as evidence.
UPDATE, January 20, 2008: The Search For Hannah Is Over
Mobile County authorities held a news conference Sunday afternoon announcing the search for two year old Hannah Luong had ended.________________
Sheriff Sam Cochran said, "The Coast Guard dispatched and has recovered the body of a small Asian child."
But as to whether or not the body is that of Luong, Cochran said, "We cannot make absolute confirmation and that will be up to the medical examination and authorities. But at this time its sufficient enough to us to suspend all recovery operations."
UPDATE, January 16, 2008: Stormy Weather Halts Search for 4th Child in Coastal Waters
Stormy weather Wednesday forced a halt in the search of waterways off the Alabama and Mississippi coast for the last of four children allegedly thrown from the Dauphin Island bridge by their father._________________
UPDATE, January 15, 2008: Police: Third Child's Body Found in Search for Kids Allegedly Thrown Off Bridge by Father
Police found a third body near a Mississippi refinery Tuesday in the search for young children allegedly tossed from a bridge by their father._________________
UPDATE, January 13, 2008: Body found of 2nd child believed thrown from bridge
A second body was recovered Sunday in the search for four children allegedly thrown from a coastal bridge by their father, police said.__________________
The body was found by a search team near where a duck hunter found the body of an infant on Saturday, said Mobile County sheriff's Sgt. Jerry Taylor.
Both were found in a marshy area about five miles west of the bridge, Taylor said.
UPDATE, January 12, 2008: Body of 1 of 4 kids found in Ala. water
A duck hunter on Saturday found the body of the youngest of four children allegedly thrown from a coastal bridge by their father, raising hopes that the other bodies will be recovered, a sheriff said.
A search for the children — ranging in age from a few months to 3 years — began Tuesday near the mouth of Mobile Bay after prosecutors said the father, Lam Luong, confessed.
About 9 a.m. Saturday, a duck hunter found the body of an infant about five miles west of the bridge in a marshy area.
"The inevitable nightmare we have feared has now been confirmed," Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran said. "We believe, certainly now, that the father of these children threw these children off the Dauphin Island bridge."
...When told that her infant's body had been found, a grief-stricken Phan wept, comforted by an associate pastor at a Vietnamese congregation that includes some members of her family.
Through an interpreter, Phan asked, "Why didn't he kill me instead of the children? It's too much hurting."
Kieu Ngoc Phan, mother of the children allegedly thrown by their father Lam Luong from the Dauphin Island Bridge, talks to the media Saturday Jan. 12, 2008 with the help of The Rev. Phi Vo, the family's counselor, after learning the body of one of the children was recovered in waters near Bayou La Batre, Ala. (AP Photo/Press-Register, Victor Calhoun)
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UPDATE, January 10, 2008: Father denies he dropped 4 off bridge
A man accused of tossing his four young children off a coastal bridge to their deaths denies killing them and says police harassed him into making a false confession, his attorney said Thursday.
Authorities say Lam Luong confessed to killing the children, ranging in age from a few months to 3 years, a day after reporting them missing and claiming a woman had taken them.
But Luong's appointed attorney, Joe Kulakowski, said his client told him he falsely confessed under pressure after being questioned Monday night and the entire day Tuesday.
"When police yelled, `We know you killed them,' he at some point realized they weren't going to believe him," Kulakowski said.
"We don't have any bodies. There's a lot of emotion and nobody knows the facts right now," he added.
...Kulakowski said Luong told him the children were taken Monday morning by a woman named Kim who claimed to know their mother and would get them food and clothes. He said they were not returned later Monday as promised.
He said officers should be searching for Kim and a second woman who left with the children in a van.
Prosecutors said Luong, 37, gave that account after the children were reported missing Monday but confessed after investigators pressed him on holes in his story.
"We believe he killed the kids by tossing them off the bridge," said District Attorney John Tyson Jr.
No.
A father does not confess to killing his children just because police are yelling at him.
No way.
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Police say Lam Luong, 37, confessed to throwing four children off the Dauphin Island bridge, which is as high as 80 feet above the water in places (ABCNEWS)
There are bad parents and then there are monsters.
Lam Luong is a monster.
BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. -- A man angered after a dispute with his wife confessed to tossing his four young children off a bridge, authorities said Wednesday as they searched murky waters for the bodies.
Lam Luong, 37, who is charged with four counts of capital murder, told authorities Tuesday night that he drove to the Dauphin Island bridge and dropped the children from a span that reaches 80 feet in places, said Detective Scott Rivera.
Luong came to coastal Alabama from Vietnam in 1984 and worked in the commercial fishing industry as a shrimper, Police Chief John Joyner and a relative said. He had argued with his wife, Ngoc Phan, before taking the children, he said.
Missing and presumed dead were 4-month-old Danny Luong; 1-year-old Lindsey Luong; 2-year-old Hannah Luong; and 3-year-old Ryan Phan. Phan is not the man's biological child, but Luong raised him from infancy, authorities said.
...The family initially feared the children had been traded to support a drug habit, Phengsisomboun said. Luong had a crack cocaine habit and had spent an insurance settlement from an automobile accident rapidly, he said, and authorities confirmed Luong had a history of drug offenses.
Luong reported the children missing Monday, and told police that a woman who had the children failed to return them, authorities said. Phengsisomboun said he was later told by investigators that a witness had seen someone throw a bundle from the bridge and then saw three children in a nearby car.
Phan, 23, was in seclusion Wednesday morning at her mother's brick home, the front porch cluttered with children's shoes.
I cannot fathom having a fight with my spouse and then responding by throwing my four children off a bridge to their deaths.
Such horror!
Luong's crimes have to be a setback to Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, a group of "inmates and concerned citizens, working with supporters, family members, and advocates, to abolish the death penalty in Alabama and everywhere."
I'm against the death penalty, in theory. I try to be consistently pro-life; but I know that if Luong destroyed my family, I'd want him thrown off a bridge.
The deaths of these four children have forced me to confront my hypocrisy regarding the death penalty.
Once again, I have to struggle with the fact that I'm against it, but I'm for it.
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