Bio

Lam Luong was born in Vietnam around 1970. He came to the United States as a refugee when he was about 13 or 14 years old. He gained legal permanent residence but did not become a U.S. citizen. Luong later lived in the Gulf Coast region and worked at times as a shrimp worker. He was in a relationship with Kieu Phan, and the couple lived with several family members in the Bayou La Batre area of Alabama. They had three children together: Hannah, Lindsey, and Danny. Luong also helped raise Ryan Phan, Kieu’s child from a previous relationship.

Before the murders, the family had moved after Hurricane Katrina and later returned to the Alabama coast. Family members described Luong as unemployed for long periods and addicted to crack cocaine. The relationship between Luong and Kieu Phan had become strained, and he was accused of having another girlfriend and staying away from home.

On the morning of January 7, 2008, Luong took the four children from the family home. He later claimed he had given them to a woman, but investigators found that story false.

Murder Story

On January 7, 2008, Lam Luong took four children from the family’s home in the Bayou La Batre area of Mobile County, Alabama. The children were Ryan Phan, Hannah Luong, Lindsey Luong, and Danny Luong. The youngest children were reportedly taken without coats or shoes.

Luong drove to the Dauphin Island Bridge, a high bridge crossing over the Intracoastal Waterway and Mississippi Sound. Prosecutors said he threw the children one by one from the bridge into the water below. Some reports described the drop as about 80 feet, while others described it as around 100 feet.

After returning without the children, Luong told the family that he had left them with a woman named Kim. When the children did not return, panic spread through the household. On January 8, 2008, Luong filed a missing-person report, but investigators soon found holes in his story.

Police later said Luong confessed that he had thrown the children from the bridge after an argument with Kieu Phan. He later recanted and claimed the confession was false, but search teams continued looking for the children in coastal waters.

The children’s bodies were recovered over nearly two weeks. Danny Luong was found first on January 12, 2008, near Port Aux Pins. Ryan Phan was found on January 13 near Bayou La Fourche. Lindsey Luong was found on January 15 near the Alabama-Mississippi state line. Hannah Luong was found on January 20 near Venice, Louisiana, far from the bridge.

A grand jury indicted Luong on five counts of capital murder: one count for each child and one count covering the killing of multiple victims in a single course of conduct. Before trial, he unexpectedly pleaded guilty and asked to be put to death. Alabama law still required the case to proceed before a jury.

On March 19, 2009, a Mobile County jury convicted Luong of capital murder. On April 29, 2009, he was sentenced to death. The case received heavy media attention across Alabama and the United States because of the young ages of the victims and the way the children were killed.

In 2013, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction and death sentence, ruling that the trial should have been moved because of intense local publicity and identifying other trial problems. The Alabama Supreme Court later reversed that decision in 2014 and reinstated the conviction and death sentence.

In 2018, Luong’s death sentence was vacated after state and defense experts agreed he met the legal criteria for intellectual disability and therefore could not be executed. His sentence was changed to life imprisonment without parole.