{"id":203468,"date":"2026-03-04T06:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T06:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/203468\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T06:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T06:22:11","slug":"lookout-convicted-for-notorious-oc-honor-roll-murder-says-he-didnt-believe-killing-would-actually-happen-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/203468\/","title":{"rendered":"Lookout convicted for notorious OC \u2018honor roll murder\u2019 says he didn\u2019t believe killing would actually happen \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three decades after the Orange County \u201chonor roll murder\u201d<\/a> of a 17-year-old carried out by a group of his fellow teens drew international attention, the question of whether a man long ago convicted for serving as a lookout during the slaying shares full legal responsibility for the deadly plot was once again the center of courtroom argument on Tuesday, March 3.<\/p>\n

Whether Kirn Young Kim, then 16, was a knowing participant in the plot to kill Stuart Tay at a Buena Park home on New Year\u2019s Eve 1992, or if a plan he believed to be pure fantasy suddenly became all to real, will ultimately determine whether Kim\u2019s decades-old murder conviction will stand.<\/p>\n

\"Honor<\/p>\n

Honor Roll student Stuart Tay, who was then 17, was murdered by a gang of former friends \u2013 including three other honor roll students \u2014 on New Year\u2019s Eve 1992. (Photo courtesy of Tay family)\n<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

In this file photo, Robert Chan, on trial for murder in the slaying of Foothill High School student Stuart Tay in 1992, listens to the testimony of Charles Choe in Orange County Superior Court. (Ken Steinhardt, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

Show Caption<\/p>\n

1 of 2<\/p>\n

Honor Roll student Stuart Tay, who was then 17, was murdered by a gang of former friends \u2013 including three other honor roll students \u2014 on New Year\u2019s Eve 1992. (Photo courtesy of Tay family)\n<\/p>\n

Expand<\/a><\/p>\n

Kim,\u00a0an honors student who served more than a decade behind bars for Tay\u2019s killing as a model prisoner before his parole,<\/a>\u00a0has spent seven years working to overturn his murder conviction. In a series of hearings beginning late last week, he finally got a chance to testify on his own behalf<\/a> and for his attorney on Tuesday to argue the case for vacating the high-profile conviction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Robert Chan, at the time a valedictorian candidate at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, orchestrated Tay\u2019s killing after Chan and Tay had a falling out over what had been a mutual plan to rob a computer salesman. Prosecutors allege that Chan laid out his plan to kill Tay to four other teens, including Kim, and showed them a shallow grave he had dug in one of the teens\u2019 backyard. Chan also walked the others through a \u201crehearsal\u201d of the killing.<\/p>\n

Chan convinced Tay to go with him to the Buena Park home by suggesting they were going to get a firearm. Instead, Chan and another teen beat Tay with baseball bats and, at one point a sledgehammer, for seven minutes while he begged for help. Chan then forced Tay to drink rubbing alcohol and sealed his moth with duct tape \u2014 forcing him to choke on his own vomit \u2014 before burying him in the makeshift grave.<\/p>\n

Kim was sitting in his car down the street while Tay was being beaten to death, with prosecutors describing him as acting as a lookout. After Tay was dead, Kim drove Tay\u2019s car to Compton and abandoned it.<\/p>\n

During testimony on Thursday and Monday, Kim acknowledged hearing Chan say he planned to kill Tay, but added that he didn\u2019t believe Chan was actually going to go through with it.<\/p>\n

Chan had a history of threatening to kill people or falsely claiming he had killed people, Kim testified, and the plan that Chan had crafted for Tay seemed \u201cunbelievable.\u201d And Kim added that he was distracted playing video games at times when Chan was describing the deadly plot to his friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was basically an ad hoc, hastily thrown together, ridiculous plot hatched by a person (Chan) who was ostensibly the smartest of the group,\u201d Ray Chen, Kim\u2019s attorney, argued on Tuesday. \u201cIt is not whether or not Mr. Chan said, \u2018We are going to kill him (Tay) and put him in this hole,\u2019 it is whether he (Kim) believed it would come to fruition.\u201d<\/p>\n

The killing of Tay, an honors student, by a group of his fellow academically gifted teens who mostly grew up in well-off families drew widespread attention to the case. It also drew attention from Hollywood, with the 2002 crime drama \u201cBetter Luck Tomorrow\u201d being loosely based on the Tay killing, according to interviews by Justin Lin, the film\u2019s director and writer.<\/p>\n

Changes to state law mean that unlike at the time of Kim\u2019s trial, the prosecution cannot simply argue a \u201cnatural and probable consequences\u201d theory that anyone involved in the plot that led to Tay\u2019s death, including Kim, could face the same charges as those who actually killed Tay.<\/p>\n

Instead, the prosecution now argues that Kim was fully aware of the plot, was an active participant, and aided and abetted the killers.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor, Brian Fitzpatrick, argued that Kim\u2019s recent testimony was \u201cunbelievable on its face.\u201d Kim saw the makeshift grave, he was there when Chan purchased latex gloves for the group, he heard Chan say multiple times he planned to kill Tay, and he agreed to serve as a lookout, Fitzpatrick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefendant (Kim) knew what was going to happen, he intended to help it happen, and he played his role just like it was talked about,\u201d the prosecutor said. \u201cHow many times did Robert Chan have to say he was going to kill Stuart Tay that day?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim will have to wait a little while longer to learn whether his murder conviction will be vacated.<\/p>\n

Orange County Superior Court Judge Gary S. Paer asked both attorneys to provide to him written briefs outlining their arguments in the coming weeks, noting that whatever decision he makes will likely be heard by appeals court judges in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three decades after the Orange County \u201chonor roll murder\u201d of a 17-year-old carried out by a group of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1311,7,1312,723,138,134,100,611,136],"class_list":["post-203468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-buena-park","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-homicide","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}