![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/f87e4cba457ff4634ba2790f63d281f5.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nWarning: This story contains content some readers may find distressing.<\/p>\n
Disturbing new details have emerged about the murder of a Canberra woman who was stabbed to death in her kitchen in 2023.<\/p>\n
Canberra man Van Thanh Vu, 74, has faced sentencing in the ACT Supreme Court after pleading guilty to the crime.<\/p>\n
Family and domestic violence support services:<\/p>\n
If you need help immediately, call emergency services on Triple Zero.<\/p>\n
The court heard his ex-wife Thi Thuy Huong Nguyen, 65, was stabbed up to 14 times in the head and abdomen.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Trent Hickey told the court several of the wounds would have been fatal, including two that pierced her heart and one that went into her brain.<\/p>\n
“Her murder was violent and horrific,” Mr Hickey said.<\/p>\n
“The force of the offender’s blows caused the knife tip to bend.”<\/p>\n
Ms Nguyen was found on the floor, in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
The court heard she had been cooking or eating, with one plate on a bench and another on the floor.<\/p>\n
When she was discovered, Vu was found in the house unresponsive, and rushed to hospital where he was revived.<\/p>\n
‘A marriage of convenience’<\/p>\n
Court documents revealed the pair had been married in Vietnam, but Ms Nguyen had come to Australia in 1991, after she divorced Vu.<\/p>\n
Many years later, Vu moved to Australia and the pair remarried.<\/p>\n
The court materials said this was for immigration purposes, but in 2021 they divorced for a second time.<\/p>\n
After that, they lived separate lives in the same house.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors told the court it was still a matter of family violence.<\/p>\n
“This was a domestic violence murder where the offender grossly breached his trust Ms Nguyen had in him,” Mr Hickey said.<\/p>\n
But Vu’s lawyer Kylie Weston-Scheuber said it was an unusual case.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police and emergency services found Thi Thuy Huong Nguyen unresponsive on the kitchen floor. She was pronounced dead at the scene. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
“Although this is technically and legally a family violence offence \u2026 they had been married, but had not been together for some time \u2026 it was a marriage of convenience,” Ms Weston-Scheuber said.<\/p>\n
The court heard Vu increasingly perceived there was animosity towards him.<\/p>\n
Mr Hickey told the court things came to a head on the day of the murder.<\/p>\n
“The level of rage and anger that must have been inside him \u2026 was immense,” Mr Hickey said.<\/p>\n
“This was an intentional murder.”<\/p>\n
A key issue in the sentencing is remorse, which Vu tried to demonstrate with a letter to the court.<\/p>\n
Ms Weston-Scheuber said the letter did show his regret, but Mr Hickey disagreed.<\/p>\n
“He is not remorseful. He has provided this letter today when he apologises and admits his guilt \u2026 but there is no remorse,” Mr Hickey said.<\/p>\n
Offender unlikely to live more than four years<\/p>\n
Several doctors were called to give evidence to the court about Vu’s mental and physical health.<\/p>\n
The assessments included a finding that at the time of the offence, he was likely in a major depressive condition, and that he shows signs of cognitive decline.<\/p>\n
One gave an account of his diagnosis for prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n
The court heard Vu is unlikely to live more than four years longer.<\/p>\n
Ms Weston-Scheuber said his moral culpability was reduced by the psychiatric assessments.<\/p>\n
She also noted the act was spontaneous.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t carried out for reward and there was no premeditation,” Ms Weston-Scheuber said.<\/p>\n
Ms Weston Scheuber said she recognised there was no other option than jail, but urged the court to consider a non-parole period which would give Vu hope he wouldn’t die in custody.<\/p>\n
But Mr Hickey said it was too serious and there was a need to send a message to others.<\/p>\n
Vu will be sentenced later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: This story contains content some readers may find distressing. Disturbing new details have emerged about the murder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2666,64,63,76251,2667,1108,39043,60398,63513,1105,14260,191,27329,2289,2668,2968,44,238035,40205,44163,27777,238034,238033],"class_list":["post-464718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-act","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bruce","tag-canberra","tag-court","tag-domestic-violence","tag-dv","tag-family-violence","tag-guilty","tag-hearing","tag-home","tag-homicide","tag-local-news","tag-local-stories","tag-murder","tag-news","tag-plead","tag-sentencing","tag-stab","tag-stabbing","tag-thi-thuy-huong-nguyen","tag-van-thanh-vu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}