“It must be inferred that the deceased’s last ordeal must have been excruciatingly painful and terrifying, although fortunately short,” Judge Robert Button said on Friday.
“And it can also be inferred that the loss to the ex-offender’s wife of the man with whom she would soon begin a new romantic life under these circumstances has been exceptionally distressing.”
Thanh Tran was found guilty of murdering his wife’s new partner in Cabramatta West. (9News) Thanh Tran was found guilty in October of murdering Pok Min Fah, 59, on March 14, 2019, outside his ex-wife’s Cabramatta West home.
The now 79-year-old, who had no criminal record, did not deny repeatedly hitting him with the ax after hitting him with her car.
But he argued unsuccessfully that his judgment was substantially impaired by a loss of control caused by the trauma of his lived experience under Cambodian dictator Pol Pot’s regime.
In the NSW Supreme Court on Friday, Judge Button jailed him for 20 years with a non-parole period of 15 years, saying the sentence would almost certainly see him die in prison or be released in a debilitated state.
“But that’s the inevitable consequence of what Tran has done and the stage of his life at which he’s done it,” he said.
Tran and his former wife had recently divorced, but the intimate side of their marriage had ended two decades earlier.
A jury found that Tran was motivated by anger after the divorce. (9News) (New)
She was in a new relationship with Fah and they were supposed to move in together days after he was killed.
Tran had moved out of the Cabramatta family home months earlier and was living in lonely and isolated circumstances in a small apartment nearby.
“He held his daughter in high esteem, and had asked her to move in with him, an invitation she had declined,” the judge said.
Tran was sitting in his car outside the family home when he saw Fah get out carrying a metal ladder that Tran had not brought with him when he moved out.
Tran drove his car straight at Fah, knocking him to the ground, before calmly stopping and getting the ax from the trunk.
As his defenseless victim lay on the ground, he repeatedly struck himself over the head with the axe.
“To put things plainly, the deceased was hacked to death where he lay.”
The judge rejected claims that Tran had binoculars in the car because he sometimes used them to watch football games from a distance and that he had the ax for protection.
He set out Tran’s terrible experiences in Cambodia and Vietnam, where he had endured a life of great deprivation on many occasions and for a time “great inhumanity”.
He accepted that Tran was suffering from a mild version of major depression and that his life had been damaged by post-traumatic stress disorder, based on all the severely adverse experiences he had suffered.
“The loss of family life in late 2018 and early 2019 was, I accept, another loss, which the offender at the time was unable to bear.
“If he was eligible for parole, his prospects for rehabilitation would be excellent, but the judge noted that he had expressed no remorse.
“It should be noted that he has not even thought it appropriate to express remorse for the unquestionable suffering he has caused his former wife, and also his beloved daughter, who used to refer to the deceased as ‘uncle’.”