A young man has been charged with murder months after a Sydney mum-of-two was dragged from her home in front of her children and killed before being set on fire.
Thi Kim Tran, 45, was abducted at gunpoint from her Bankstown home, in Sydney’s south-west, on April 17, after she finished working at a nail salon.
She was forced to strip naked in her driveway before a group of five masked intruders dragged her into a SUV about 10.30pm and drove away.
Ms Tran’s body was found in the burnt-out vehicle about 6km from her home, an hour later.
Her eight-year-old son was bashed with a baseball bat at the family home and left for dead, while their eldest son, 15, was left traumatised, police were told.
On Thursday morning, detectives searched a unit in Bankstown where they arrested a 29-year-old man who they said ‘called the shots’ in the attack.
‘We will further allege (he) facilitated the kidnapping and murder of the 45-year-woman,’ Homicide Squad Commander Joe Doueihi told reporters on Friday.
‘He did this by meeting the offenders beforehand, travelling in convoy with the offenders to the victim’s residence, parking his car in the driveway and knocking on the front door with the three offenders standing behind him armed with a firearm a baseball bat and with their faces covered.
Mother-of-two Thi Kim Tran (pictured), 45, was abducted at gunpoint from her home in Sydney’s south-west, on April 17 and later killed
The Anh Nguyen, 29, was arrested on Thursday and charged with murder over the attack
Police have been investigating the abduction and alleged murder of Ms Tran for over four months (Pictured, footage released of alleged kidnappers leaving Ms Tran’s home on April 17)
‘He stepped aside to allow the offenders to seriously assault the child and then kidnap and strip the woman naked in the street.’
The man, identified by The Sydney Morning Herald as The Anh Nguyen, was taken to Bankstown Police Station and charged with murder.
He was also charged with wounding a person with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and was refused bail to appear before Bankstown Local Court on Friday.
Police will allege in court that Nguyen facilitated the kidnapping and murder of Ms Tran and was involved in the assault of the eight-year-old boy.
They have previously indicated the group who kidnapped Ms Tran likely targeted her as a result of her husband’s involvement with an organised criminal network (OCN) based in Victoria.
Superintendent Doueihi said police will allege that Nguyen formed a business relationship with Ms Tran’s husband in 2022.
‘In January 2025 he hired the deceased’s husband to cook methamphetamine for a Victorian drug syndicate,’ he said.
‘We will allege the 29-year-old male is a key figure in this Victorian drug syndicate which are responsible for the importation, manufacture and distribution of prohibited drugs.’
Ms Tran was taken from her home in front of her two children, with kidnappers allegedly bashing her eight-year-old son with a baseball bat leaving him in hospital
Police will also allege Nguyen guided Ms Tran’s killers to her home whilst her husband was away for the syndicate, but left before the attack.Â
The killers have not been found and investigations remain ongoing but Superintendent Doueihi said he believes they are ‘local’ and still in Australia.
‘They are a crew, muscle for hire, and they’ve been contracted by someone as part of that organisation to facilitate the kidnapping and murder of the female,’ he said.
‘This is a threat of violence from a criminal syndicate group who couldn’t find the male, so resorted to family members.’
‘We don’t see that too often in NSW, it’s extremely rare. I’d say they upset a few people in the criminal milieu because this is not the norm.
‘Family, females and children are not normally involved in these kind of attacks.’
Emergency services were called to the home about 10.30pm on the night of the incident following reports of a kidnapping.
About 11.30pm, police were then called to Welfare Avenue in Beverly Hills, following reports of a car fire.
An hour after the attack, police were called to a burnt-out vehicle (pictured) in nearby Beverly Hills where they found Ms Tran’s body
Officers then found Ms Tran’s body inside the destroyed car after fire crews extinguished the blaze.Â
In May, it was alleged that a drug cartel had messaged Ms Tran’s husband ransom countdown messages 20 minutes, 10 minutes and five minutes before stripping Ms Tran and setting her body alight.
‘It’s unclear if he was out of service range or what, but he didn’t receive them,’ a police source told The Daily Telegraph.
A property in Springdallah, a rural Victorian town almost 1,000km away from the Bankstown home, was a key part of the investigation.
The police source claimed a group of men had burst into a farmhouse on the property where drugs were being manufactured just weeks before Ms Tran’s death.
They were looking for Ms Tran’s husband.
‘They broke in and beat up the workers who were there, so they’d been looking for him for some time,’ the source said.
Victoria Police raided the alleged drug lab in Springdallah as part of a collaboration with the NSW Police Homicide Squad’s Strike Force Bushfield.
Superintendent Doueihi confirmed on Friday police had established that a dispute arose where an allegation was made that Ms Tran’s husband had stolen a ‘large quantity of drugs’.
‘(Nguyen) was tasked to resolve this issue and recover those drugs,’ he said.