Three members of an alleged “kill crew” have been arrested over the murder of a Sydney woman who was kidnapped in front of children, stripped naked, shot dead and left in a burning car.
A group of masked men who broke into the Bankstown home of Thi Kim Tran, 45, on April 17, also bashed an eight-year-old boy with a baseball bat during the kidnapping.
Thi Kim Tran was abducted from her Bankstown home and shot dead in April.Credit: Facebook
Homicide squad commander Joe Doueihi alleged the men were guns for hire engaged by a Victorian and transnational crime group after Tran’s husband, an alleged drug cook for the syndicate, was accused of stealing 80 kilograms of methamphetamine.
Tran’s murder and a string of other savage attacks have dragged the activities of secretive Vietnamese crime groups back out of the shadows. Police intercepted a separate alleged kill plot earlier this month, involving would-be assassins hired by a Vietnamese syndicate to murder a father outside his children’s daycare centre in Revesby, in Sydney’s south-west.
Police allege the men charged with Tran’s murder were hired to kill her husband but, when he couldn’t be found, targeted his wife instead.
The men were led to Tran’s home by The Anh Nguyen, a 29-year-old man Doueihi alleged was in the upper echelons of the syndicate. He was arrested in August and charged with murder, and wounding a person with intent to cause grievous bodily harm over the alleged attack on the eight-year-old boy.
Nguyen allegedly knocked on Tran’s door with the three men – who were masked, cloaked in dark clothing and armed with a pistol and baseball bat – behind him. Her husband was interstate working for the syndicate at the time, police alleged.
The masked men then allegedly stripped Tran naked on the street and bundled her at gunpoint into the back of the SUV. She was bound and gagged in what Doueihi described on Friday as a “very, very brutal” attack.
The men sent messages to Tran’s husband, Doueihi alleged, including a photo of his wife in an attempt to locate him. After failing to “lure him out”, the men allegedly shot Tran and torched the SUV with her body inside. The burning car was later discovered in Beverly Hills.
Homicide squad detectives arrested three men aged 32, 20 and 21 at Parramatta police station on Thursday morning. All three were charged with murder, conspiracy to murder Tran’s husband, wounding a person with intent to cause previous bodily harm, kidnapping and participating in a criminal group.
Doueihi said the days of organised criminals leaving family members unharmed were over.
“These young criminals are ruthless. They don’t care about ‘the code’, if I can use that word … it’s what’s in their best interests. They’re selfish, they’re greedy, they don’t think of the consequences. These guys are in big trouble,” he said. “If convicted, they are looking at serving long, long sentences in jail.”
Police allege “kill crews” are contract criminals hired by syndicates through encrypted messaging apps to carry out hits on their behalf. They are not loyal to any particular criminal group. “They go out, they purchase the kill kit, they purchase clothing, they purchase whatever else they require to complete their task,” Doueihi said. A kill crew also hired by a Vietnamese syndicate in July allegedly kidnapped a man, shot him in the head and buried him in Queensland bushland before he managed to dig himself from the dirt and stumble to a service station for help.
Tran’s husband, who is cooperating with police, was working for a methamphetamine manufacturing syndicate allegedly run by Daniel Rodney Badger, a Sydney man who relocated to South-East Asia believed to be one of the Australian Federal Police’s highest-value targets.
Badger’s syndicate is believed to be linked to the foiled alleged plot to murder a Sydney father as he collected his children from a Revesby daycare centre earlier this month.
The eight-year-old boy Tran’s alleged killers bashed in the head with a baseball bat came out of a coma in the days after the attack. Doueihi said the child was “remarkably” recovering well but, along with another 15-year-old boy who witnessed the kidnapping was suffering ongoing psychological issues.
Most Viewed in National
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
