ACT III: THE TRAGEDY OF HE WHO WOULD BE THE SECOND COMING OF TRADER VIC
on a whim, my curiosity of what happened to the restaurateur who decided to ramp up a polynesian restaurant in georgetown in freakin 1977 led me to do an innocent google search... which led to a washington post archive plus other internet searches...
Murder Trial Without a Body Starts Tomorrow in Montgomery
Article from: The Washington Post
Article date: November 5, 1989
Author: Paul Duggan
On the night of Sept. 7, 1988, sometime after 8 o'clock, the telephone rang in the suburban home of Gregory Mung-Sen Tu, a failed businessman and former longtime Washington restaurant manager whose whereabouts that evening were of great interest to the Montgomery County police.
Tu, then 58, had become a suspect in the disappearance of 42-year-old Chuan-Yu Lau, also known as Lisa Tu, a woman with whom he had been living in Potomac for almost a decade. Detectives believed Tu had killed her and disposed of her body, which had not been found.
But on that night of Sept. 7, Tu himself was nowhere to be found. Three weeks earlier, on the eve of his scheduled police polygraph test …
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1221290.html
Criminal Procedure Exam
(20 minutes)
Former Potomac, Maryland, businessman Gregory Tu, sentenced to life in prison for killing his common-law wife, whose body was never found, applied for a new trial to the state Court of Special Appeals. Tu asked that his first-degree murder conviction be overturned on the grounds that jurors were improperly allowed to consider evidence seized from Tu's hotel room in Las Vegas, where he fled following his wife's disappearance in 1988.
Originally, Tu's attorneys had moved unsuccessfully to prevent the prosecution from introducing at the trial the contested evidence seized on September 12, 1988, from Tu's hotel room. The items of evidence--including Tu's handwritten phone numbers of prostitutes and a laundry receipt with a false name on it--were objected to on the grounds that they were not listed in the search warrant secured by the police prior to the search.
(1) Acting on behalf of the prosecutor summarize any principles or doctrines which would have permitted the police to seize items not specified in the search warrant; (2) would the police have cured any defects in the warrant had they proceeded also with an arrest warrant? (3) Advance the best defense argument against (1) and (2) above.
http://www.wcl.american.edu/exams/exam_display.cfm?exam_id=163&prof_id=30
Missing victims test courts
No-body' murder trials a growing trend in country Cases incredibly difficult'
Howard County
October 01, 2000|By Lisa Goldberg | Lisa Goldberg,SUN STAFF
By the time prosecutor John McCarthy took on Gregory Tu in a Montgomery County courtroom in 1989, investigators had amassed 50 witnesses, theorized a motive for murder and pooled tiny droplets of blood into a quarter-size DNA sample to prove his wife Lisa Tu had met a violent end.
The prosecutors and detectives who worked the Tu case for 14 months pulled together every piece of the murder puzzle except one: There was no trace of Lisa Tu, no body to verify her death, no medical examiner photos to show a jury the gruesome details of a violent attack.
McCarthy won his case anyway.
Not too many years earlier, "most people I spoke to felt there was no way you could get a [murder] conviction without a body," said McCarthy, a Montgomery County deputy state's attorney.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-10-01/news/0010010079_1_body-montgomery-county-riggins
Lisa Lau Tu
Above: Lisa, circa 1988
Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance
Missing Since: July 14, 1988 from Potomac, Maryland
Classification: Endangered Missing
Age: 42 years old
Distinguishing Characteristics: Brown hair, brown eyes. Lisa's Chinese name is Chuan-Yu Lau.
Details of Disappearance
Lisa was last seen in Potomac, Maryland on July 14, 1988. She has never been heard from again. Her common-law husband, Gregory Mung-Sen Tu, says he put her on a plane to San Francisco, California at 5:00 p.m. that day. He said she was going to visit a sick friend. She never arrived in that city, however. Authorities discovered that a plane ticket to San Francisco had been purchased in Lisa's name, but other passengers on the plane reported that her seat was empty. The sick friend she was supposedly visiting was in fact in good health and had had not heard from Lisa in months. In addition, although one of Lisa's suitcases and some of her favorite dresses were gone, she left behind other items she normally took with her when she traveled.
Two days after Lisa vanished, Gregory paid for a garbage collector to get rid of a loveseat in their residence. It was in good condition and Lisa often slept on it. It was never found and is believed to have been pulverized at a landfill. When investigators searched the Tu home, they found a meat cleaver, twine and plastic wrap in his Lincoln Town Car. There was blood on the dashboard of the family car, and blood was also found in the basement near where the loveseat had been. The area had been cleaned and most of the blood was not visible, but when investigators sprayed Luminol, a chemical used to detect blood traces, they discovered a significant amount of blood in the basement and a blood trail to the bathroom and up the stairs. DNA testing, which was a new technology at the time, proved the blood was from Lisa.
Lisa and Gregory had been living together for ten years prior to her disappearance and referred to each other as husband and wife, but they were not legally married, and Lisa was also having an illicit relationship with another man. Gregory was a suspect in Lisa's case since shortly after she disappeared. Lisa was financially secure, but Gregory was having financial difficulties and is known to have withdrawn $44,000 from Lisa's son's college fund without her permission five days before she vanished. Gregory put the money in his own account. Investigators believe Lisa found out and had an argument with him about it. Although Gregory says he had a good relationship with Lisa at the time of her disappearance, others maintain the couple argued frequently, usually about money, and Lisa was considering kicking him out. The couple's house, which was worth $250,000, was in Lisa's name only at the time of her disappearance. The state of Maryland does not recognize common-law marriages, so if Lisa decided to end her relationship with Gregory, he would have had no rights to her property.
After Lisa's teenage son reported her missing, authorities questioned Gregory and he agreed to take a polygraph test in two days. He left the area without notifying anyone the next day, before he could take the test. He was later traced to Las Vegas, Nevada. In September 1988, Gregory was arrested in Las Vegas and charged with first-degree murder in Lisa's case. He was convicted the following year, but the conviction was overturned. He was retried and convicted of second-degree murder in 1992, six years after Lisa vanished. Prosecutors believe he shot Lisa to death inside their home. Gregory owned a Browning 380 pistol which vanished from the home around the same time Lisa did.
Gregory is still incarcerated. Lisa's remains have never been located.
Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Montgomery County Police Department
240-773-5070
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/t/tu_lisa.html
O_o
OK... start a failed tiki restaurant when you think it's gonna bring in $1.25 million in profits... have a common law wife and live in potomac... murder her and dispose of her body.
morality tale, anybody???
[ Edited by: Johnny Dollar 2011-02-20 18:17 ]
