A Washington man who allegedly murdered a woman in Vietnam may never have to face the charges against him.
Seattle Post Intelligencer reports:
Timothy Doran, of Washington, admitted in court to beating, strangling and stuffing Bich Ngoc Thi Nguyen, 24, to death, with the help of two unnamed friends, in a closet. She was found in an apartment Doran shared with his two sons, but he fled Vietnam immediately after to the United States.
The U.S. and Vietnam do not have a extradition treaty, which means the U.S. can't force Doran to go back to Vietnam to be tried. However, the U.S. is currently working with Vietnam law enforcement to bring witnesses to Seattle so he could be given justice in America.
"The crime was committed in Vietnam," Nguyen's sister said in a letter published on several English-language news sites in Vietnam. "It is only fair and right that Doran faces the Vietnamese judicial system.
Doran is no newbie to crime. The murder of Nguyen is just one of many allegations that were pressed against him in recent years.
"Over the last 20 years, Doran has committed a succession of ever-more appalling violent crimes against women, ranging from assault to rape and now to murder," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brian Werner and Andrew Friedman told the court previously.
He spent seven years in prison after his sentencing in 1992 where he was convicted of raping and brutalizing his ex-girlfriend. He also filled a home with natural gas and left her children inside the building to die.
Doran also has attacked two other women who he reportedly had intimate relationships with.
"He is a clear and present danger to any woman he establishes a relationship with," Lasnik said during the sentencing hearing, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office statement. "He is a serial domestic abuser."
Doran was also sentenced yesterday to eight years in federal prison for failing to register as a sex offender in mid-2010, which prosecutors suspect is why he was in Vietnam in the first place.
