It was a sweltering summer day in 1990, and more than 100 Asian gang members and their families gathered at Rosedale Memorial Park Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey, to bury 21-year-old Vinh Vu, the No. 2 leader of the violent Born to Kill gang (BTK).
Suddenly, three men dressed in long coats that covered the automatic weapons they carried approached. These men then did the unthinkable: they opened fire on the mourners and chaos ensued. Frightened people ran in all directions, including gang leader David Thai and 19-year-old Vietnamese refugee Tinh Ngo, called Timmy by fellow gang members. Over 100 rounds were fired into the crowd. Five mourners were injured, but surprisingly, no one was killed.
Tinh, like most typical teenage gang members, had no family in America and gravitated to the mostly Vietnamese BTK gang for the same reason as the other gang members: he wanted a sense of family in a foreign land, people who could trust and converse in their mother tongue. Tinh never realized that he would be dragged into a pit of vipers, where the 34-year-old Thai would order his subordinates to commit violent crimes (extortion, robbery and even murder) against other Asian immigrants, people who traditionally never reported crimes to the police. .
Tinh committed his first dirty deed when he participated in the heist of a Chinese brothel in Chinatown. While Tinh didn’t enjoy the prank, he still gave her a sense of euphoria, knowing that he was now “one of the gang.” As he committed robbery after robbery, Tinh gradually began to question if this life of violence was for him.
David Thai feels that his subordinates across the United States carry out his chaos. In late 1990, Thai led a group of BTKs, including Tinh, to Doraville, Georgia to rob a Chinese curio shop owned by Odum Lin. Lin, unimpressed with barely shaven gangsters, resisted and was shot in the side of the head.
Miraculously, Lin survived but Tinh was unaware that the owner was still alive; he thought he was an accessory to murder. This senseless shooting sent Tinh over the top, and when he was arrested on a lesser charge soon after, he met with a group of investigators, both federal and New York City law enforcement, who were trying to build a case against the Born. to Kill Gang, and its leader David Thai specifically.
Tired of gang life, Tinh switched easily and, under the guidance of New York City Detective Bill Oldham, ATF Special Agent Dan Kumor, and Assistant US Attorney Alan Vinegrad, began wearing a wire during his meetings. with Thai and other major BTK gangs. members
In Born to Kill, TJ English, a former New York City cabbie and author of another excellent book, The Westies, gives us a vivid account of Tinh’s insider activities that decimated the Born to Kill Gang. Tinh’s inside information was very accurate; Kumor and Oldham were even able to foil several BTK robberies before they could happen.
At first, Tinh was terrified of carrying a cable. On one occasion, while Tinh was sitting in the living room of a safe house watching TV with other BTKs, another gang member noticed a red glow inside Tinh’s shirt. The glow was the battery light from her tape recorder that was banged into his chest.
Thinking he was now a dead man, Tinh ran to the bathroom, pulled out the tape recorder, then slipped into the living room to await his fate. Surprisingly, the other gang member was glued to the TV and barely noticed that Tinh had left the room and returned. Tinh muttered something about a bad locator to the gang member who had noticed the red light; the gang member believed Tinh’s explanation, and Tinh was safe, for now.
After Thai attempted to involve his gang in a concert robbery with Italian mobsters from New Jersey, which was again prevented by Tinh’s inside knowledge of the impending event, Oldham, Kumor, and Vinegrad decided it was too dangerous for Tinh to remain undercover. . They took Tinh off the streets and began the prosecution of Thai and other top BTK operatives. This resulted in Thai being sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
