From A Quiet Life To Murder Charge -- Shock, Disbelief Surround Suspect In Lui's Killing

For a young man some saw as silence and shyness personified, much horrible noise now surrounds Dung Hoang Le:

Weeping for Mayme Lui, the 74-year-old widow of photography-studio founder Yuen Lui, whom Le is accused of stabbing 19 times before trying to extort ransom money from her family earlier this month. Statements of shock from those who know Le. And so many questions from everyone.

Family members describe this 19-year-old Ballard High School graduate as a devoted son who spent most of his free time entertaining his little sister, cooking, playing Monopoly or doing homework.

A teacher who tried in vain to get him to speak in class called him "probably the most quiet person I've ever known."

Police have found no history to indicate that, if Le committed a crime, his first would be so brutal.

And yet, those close to him said Le always seemed to hold a part of himself in secret. His life seemed ready to head in either of two very different directions.

Don Douglass, head of the bilingual-education department at Ballard High, thought he had tipped the balance. He shook the young man's hand at graduation in June, glad he had shown Le personal attention and tried to keep him from slipping into the wrong crowd of friends.

Le was to attend Seattle Central Community College this fall, according to his family. He told his parents he wanted to be an artist or a hair stylist.

Now, charged with aggravated first-degree murder and extortion, if convicted, he could become the youngest person in King County to face the death penalty since executions were reinstated in 1981.

He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail in the King County Jail pending trial.

Prosecutors have two weeks to decide whether to seek the death penalty or the alternative, life in prison without parole.

A 17-year-old boy has been charged with first-degree rendering criminal assistance for allegedly helping Le dump Lui's body down an embankment. At a hearing Wednesday, prosecutors will seek approval to try that boy as an adult.

Said Douglass: "I cry for the woman. I cry for the kid. And I cry for myself. What could I have done? It was so sad."

Le's home on South Holden Street is one of the larger houses on this side street sloping west toward Boeing Field.

Inside and out are symbols of the family's Vietnamese-Chinese heritage. The walls bear pictures of movie stars dressed as military men, of couples embracing, of Le's 6-year-old sister graduating from kindergarten.

Le allegedly called the Lui family from the basement Sept. 10, demanding $100,000 for the return of a woman who would never come back. He and the juvenile were arrested while trying to clean blood from her stolen Mercedes, after they were followed to it from Le's home.

For such a quiet youth, he allegedly told a number of conflicting stories to the Lui family and later to police.

In one account, he said he had just been hired to make demands on the family for a group of men. He said the men gave him Lui's driver's license and a Yuen Lui studio business card.

Le took detectives to a pool hall on Martin Luther King Way South, where he said he was supposed to pick up his payment. No one showed up.

Later, he told police he had seen a group of boys accost Lui and, afterward, that he saw blood smeared in her Seward Park garage.

Later still, Le said he had approached Lui at her home and that she "ran into" the knife blade while he was holding it to her abdomen. That time, he said he had been hired at Green Lake by a stranger who was offering to pay $20,000 to have the woman killed.

Seattle police homicide detective Steve O'Leary doesn't believe any of the stories. He and prosecutors say Le acted alone in killing Lui in the course of a robbery and trying to extort money from her family after Lui was dead.

Police have found no evidence Le was involved with a gang or had any criminal history during his eight years in the United States.

"He was a shy person, almost like a girl," his father, Bay Le, said through a translator this week. "The boy likes friends and to help out friends. After school he would come home, play some games and do his homework. He always aspired to college.

"And then these terrible events just almost explode. . . . I do not believe this could happen."

Family members said they could not talk about the case itself or what might have happened.

They have not had the chance to talk much to their oldest boy of four children, to find out which of the conflicting stories he told police is the truth - or whether any is.

Asked to convey his feelings about what happened to Mayme Lui, Bay Le shook his head and constricted his face in pain. He said he had no words, in Vietnamese or otherwise.

LOOKING FOR CLUES

Before the Le family came to the U.S. in 1984, their life in Vietnam was middle class and without much worry, Bay Le said.

In Bremerton, where they arrived on an uncle's sponsorship, troubles started: language adjustments, a lack of jobs. The father had been in the military, the mother in nursing. The family moved to Seattle in 1990. Neither parent is working now.

Le worked off and on last year doing after-school janitorial work at a clothing manufacturing company south of the Kingdome. Records there indicate he last worked in June.

His family recites a list of attributes and accomplishments: building the pale green playhouse outside for his sister Linda, cooking fragrant Vietnamese pho (noodle soup), accompanying his mother to temple and to the doctor, doing his homework, never complaining.

They say, as far as they knew, Le never knew the Lui family.

His 22-year-old sister, Iris, said she never could really penetrate her brother's shyness. He never seemed interested in money, girls and other teenage pursuits, she said; only recently had he started to date.

"And now this - I don't know what is going on at all. I don't know what is going on with him."

CHANGES IN SCHOOL

One day last year, Le walked down a hallway at Ballard High School, away from the class he was supposed to be in.

Douglass, the bilingual-education department head, stopped Le and told him from now on, he would spend second period with Douglass if he was going to graduate in the spring.

"He seemed relieved. It was almost as if he was glad I'd stopped him from going down that road," Douglass said. "From then on, I don't think he ever missed my class."

When Le first came to Ballard, he was a "nice-enough boy," Douglass said. But in his senior year, he started hanging around with a group of youths suspected of making trouble. The group was not a gang, as far as Douglass knew.

Things changed some during those second-period classes. Douglass had Le write reports on writers such as Jack London. Occasionally, they would practice conversation in English one-on-one, and Douglass noticed improvement in the slight stutter and nervousness Le exhibited when he had to speak in front of others.

Despite his difficulties with English and attendance problems early on, Le met the requirements to graduate. "I was very proud of him," said Douglass.

Now, whether Le is guilty or not, that future has been foreclosed.

"I wish I could see him and talk to him," Douglass said. "If I could, I would just ask, `Why? What happened?' "