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Friends become enemies
Saevang, once close to Tzeo, says he is afraid he will have to kill him or move, or be killed
Journal Photo Illustration by Richard Boyd II / AP and Family Photos
Brian Tzeo says he wishes he knew why his former friend Chiew Chan Saevang might have killed his wife and three children. Saevang later killed himself and his girlfriend.
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Published: May 21, 2009
CONOVER
Chiew Chan Saevang is driving along when he spots a friend out mowing the yard.
He pulls over to talk.
Saevang is worried. He says that Brian Tzeo used to be his best friend. But something has happened between them.
He may have to kill Tzeo, or move, Saevang says. Otherwise, he says, he is afraid that he will be killed himself.
"What happened, Chiew?" the friend asks.
In the months before Tzeo's family was murdered on March 12, it was a question between friends. Now, with six people dead, it is a question that echoes.
From North Carolina to Wisconsin to California, there are loved ones affected, people who still want to know.
What happened?
Motive still a mystery
Saevang will never be able to explain why he murdered Tzeo's estranged wife and their son and two daughters. He killed himself and his girlfriend as officers closed in on him in Utah as he apparently was trying to flee to friends and family in California.
But speculation in the community is high, especially among the area's Southeast Asian immigrants.
One theory is that Tzeo had turned Saevang in for trafficking in opium in 2004. Authorities say that isn't true. Saevang's arrest brought unwelcome scrutiny of his friends, including Tzeo, who authorities say was also involved in the opium trade.
Others blame Saevang's arrest on a former girlfriend of Tzeo's, who was angry with Tzeo for trying to take out a restraining order against her after a fight. They say they think that she reported Tzeo and Saevang as opium dealers.
About 9 or 10 p.m. on June 5, 2004, Tzeo's former girlfriend arrived at a gathering of Mien friends in Alexander County and slapped Tzeo in the face, Tzeo told authorities. He said that she grabbed a beer bottle and tried to hit him, and then threatened to shoot him. He said that his troubles with the woman went back to 2002 when he wouldn't run off with her, and she falsely accused him of raping her. He said that she had threatened to bomb his house.
The stories were lies, the woman said. A magistrate decided that Tzeo had failed to prove his claims and would not issue a restraining order.
Saevang was arrested four days after the fight between Tzeo and his former girlfriend.
But on the same day as the fight, authorities at the Los Angeles International Airport selected a shipment from Bangkok for inspection. Saevang went to prison after authorities found opium in the package.
Even if the woman had been angry with Tzeo, the package had already been intercepted by customs officials before the fight. Further, the package was not addressed to Tzeo or Saevang, but to a fictitious name at an apartment in Hickory that was not where Saevang lived. The woman wouldn't have been able to tell authorities how to find the package.
But the conflict between Tzeo and his one-time girlfriend was so strong that the woman's former husband was the first suspect when Tzeo's family was killed. Authorities decided that the man was not involved, and they focused instead on what Tzeo told them about his opium dealing.
Different kind of trafficking
Authorities say that Tzeo told them that he thought that about $150,000 to $200,000 worth of opium was stolen the day of the murders. But they have never found the stolen opium and don't know how much there was.
They have talked about the missing opium as being a possible motive for the murders, but still have questions about why Saevang committed such violence against the family.
Authorities say that Tzeo would receive opium in the mail at his Catawba County home. He would then send out small pieces of opium -- some maybe the size of a fingernail -- through the mail to addresses in Wisconsin, where there is a large Southeast Asian population.
None of the packages were mailed to Saevang, who had been living in Wisconsin since December.
Tzeo was not converting the opium to heroin, authorities said. He didn't have the equipment or the expertise to do that. Instead, his motive in the opium trade, they believed, was partly to make money and partly to be an important man within his culture who helped get medicinal opium for people.
It was a mom-and-pop operation, authorities say, and not a big-time international drug-smuggling operation. Authorities say that Tzeo and Saevang may have disagreed over quantities.
On March 19, seven days after the murders and the day after Saevang killed himself, a judge in Catawba Superior Court sealed a search warrant connected to the murders. The investigation of the opium-trafficking conspiracy by local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies has implicated multiple people in several states, authorities said in asking to have the warrant sealed.
The investigation is still going on today.
Drugs, money, revenge?
Some say they suspect that the killings were more about money and revenge than about stealing drugs. If revenge against Tzeo was the motive, Saevang hurt him badly in killing Tzeo's only son. Mien people such as Tzeo consider daughters to belong to other people's families once they marry. The son continues the family line and performs the ancestor-worship rituals that maintain the family line.
Without a son, Tzeo's family line will die.
A source in the community says that Tzeo and Saevang had gone from being best friends to being enemies.
When Saevang was in prison, Tzeo sent him money. When Saevang was paroled in October 2007, Brian Tzeo's family was the first to take him in. They helped him. And even after he moved out on his own, Saevang came back often to visit.
But sources -- including the friend who talked to Saevang while mowing the lawn -- say that Saevang and Tzeo started arguing over money. Saevang was working for Tzeo when he was arrested, according to a source. Saevang thought that Tzeo owed him opium, and he wanted it back. He wanted his money.
They say that Saevang was very angry, that he felt that Tzeo had cheated him.
But Tzeo's family was having money problems of its own.
In July 2007, Brian Tzeo filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, citing credit-card debt of more than $58,000. He said he was separated from his wife, Lisa Phan, although they lived together until the day of the murders.
On Jan. 30 of this year, a little more than a month before she was murdered, Lisa Phan filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, citing credit-card debt of more than $43,000. She said she was separated from her husband.
Phan listed her home not as the place where she was living -- the place where she would be murdered -- but as an address in Taylorsville.
The address was the home of Feuy Chio Saelee. She is the former wife of Chiew Chan Saevang.
Saelee and Phan worked together at the Tyson chicken-processing plant in Wilkesboro. They were friends. They visited often in each other's homes.
Saelee says that Phan was planning to move out, and that's why she put down Saelee's address on her bankruptcy form.
She doesn't understand why Saevang would kill the family.
"I don't really know," Saelee said. "I'm not sure why he do that. Why he kill himself? Why he do that? If you need opium, you cover your face and take the stuff. You don't kill them. You don't kill yourself."
Some members of the Southeast Asian community, both here and in Wisconsin, where Saevang was living, say they don't believe that it was Saevang who killed Tzeo's family.
That's the opinion of a man living at the Schofield, Wis., home where Saevang stayed briefly and where Saevang met his parole officer three days before the murders. Saevang was still on parole for his 2004 arrest for opium trafficking.
"He seemed happy," said the man, who wouldn't give his name. "He said his probation is almost over, and he's happy. He said he's not going to do anything like that again."
No evidence
Tzeo has not been charged in connection with opium trafficking. Some people in the community are angry about that. Others say that he has suffered enough.
But experts say that authorities would not be able to successfully prosecute Tzeo without evidence, even if he had admitted to drug trafficking.
Forrest Ferrell, a Hickory lawyer who was a Superior Court judge for 24 years, said that a confession would not be enough for a conviction without the opium. "It is imperative, and it is required in order for them to charge him -- that they would have to have some of the controlled substance," he said.
Local authorities won't answer more questions about the case now, they say, because a federal investigation is continuing.
In the days immediately after his family was killed, Tzeo iwas interviwewed in a hotel room by reporters for The Associated Press
"I regret everything," Tzeo said in the interview. "It's something I never should have gotten involved in. It's hard to live with this."
In that interview, Tzeo declined to discuss any details of the drug dealing.
Authorities allowed Tzeo to go to California to attend the funerals for his family, a decision that angered many people, especially when Tzeo didn't come back as soon as he said he would.
But Tzeo is back from California.
Living alone
It is quiet now on the front porch of his home where his daughter Pauline stood and knocked on the door when she thought that her family needed help, the place where a killer jumped out and beat and stabbed her. There is a small table to hold rice, a snack cake, three open bottles of water and a bottle of juice, all meant to nourish the spirits of the dead.
The shrine of homemade posters, photos and stuffed animals that people left at the mailbox is gone.
It is Tuesday of this week. The garage door is open. A friend is helping Tzeo clean up. There are piles of clothes. There is a red-and-yellow kiddie car that Cody used to ride.
Tzeo is in the attic. As he comes down the ladder, he clutches a photo of his family. He puts it in a plastic bag.
He says he doesn't want to talk, that everything is the same.
It's unclear exactly what he means, although his family is still dead and the investigation into opium trafficking is continuing.
Of course, nothing will ever be the same.
People weep for Cody, the innocent 4-year-old found murdered on the living room floor with his fingers still in the bowl of dry cereal he had been eating when a killer came into his home.
They weep for Pauline, the brave young woman who came back to help her family.
They weep for Melanie, the quiet community-college student studying health management.
They weep for Lisa, the mother who worked nights at the chicken plant. She told friends that it was hard work, but she did it to make a living.
Standing in his garage, Tzeo does respond to one question.
Why would Saevang do this?
"I wish I knew," he says.
■ Monte Mitchell can be reached in Wilkesboro at 667-5691 or at mmitchell@wsjournal.com.
■ Richard Gould can be reached in Hickory at 828-304-6916 or rgould@hickoryrecord.com.
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