Trinh Nguyen appeared to be another devoted suburban mom. What went wrong?
Trinh Nguyen had a lot of stress in her life following her most recent divorce including an imminent eviction from her Upper Makefield home, but by all appearances she was moving forward.
She recently started selling false eyelashes online and was putting the profits back into her new business. Those who knew her said her recent personal setbacks, it didn’t seem to interfere with her parenting her two sons.
Nguyen, 38, took Nelson, 9, and Jeffrey, 13, Tini to the annual Upper Makefield Fire Company Carnival, which started April 26, the day after authorities say she wrote out instructions for handling the remains of her and her sons.
The three also attended Jeffery’s end-of-the-season swim team party the day before she allegedly shot them as they slept in their beds.
The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office has not released a motive in the May 1 fatal shootings. Mental health experts say it could be a while before the complete picture of Nguyen emerges. Nguyen is being held in Bucks County Prison without bail on homicide and attempted homicide charges.
Researchers have identified general characteristics and patterns among parents who have killed their children, but it is not something that is easy to accurately predict, forensic experts said.
Financial problems, single parenthood, multiple children, substance abuse, and mental illness are among the factors experts believe contribute to a parent killing their child, according to research. Prolonged periods of stress also can lead parents with poor coping skills to reach a breaking point mentally.
Filicide, when parents kill their children, happens about 500 times a year in the United States, according to a 2014 study, the first comprehensive look at parents who murder their children. Psychologist Cheryl Meyer, an expert in family violence, estimated a mother kills a child somewhere in the U.S. every three days.
At least four Bucks County children been murdered by their parents since 2016, including 7-year-old Kayden Mancuso who was killed by her father, and 13-year-old Damon Decree and 25-year-old Naairah Smith, among five family members killed in by their mother, Shana Decree and sister Dominique, 19.
While a mother accused of murdering her child is often considered especially shocking, research shows that both genders kill offspring at roughly equal rates.
Some parents kill as a result of symptoms of psychotic disorders, but that is rare, according to psychologist Dr. Louis Schlesinger, who specializes in deviant behavior at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Schlesinger added that it is impossible to generalize what motivates a parent to kill.
“There are many, many motives, many dynamics, many circumstances. You can’t say A,B,C,D and then there is a murder,” he said. “People want to look for a watershed event in someone’s life and they aren’t going to find it. There are multiple things that go on in people’s lives.”
UPDATE:Brothers who were shot in Upper Makefield home have died, CR District announces
What drives parents who kill
Nguyen does not immediately appear to cleanly fit the established patterns of a parent who kills a child based on the five factors forensic mental health experts say motivate these parents. Among them are an unwanted child, partner revenge and a parent's belief — real or imagined — a child is better off dead.
She allegedly used a gun, which is unusual, especially for women. Mental or physical health problems are not mentioned in court documents related to her child custody cases. Most children killed by a parent are under the age of 6. Mothers are less likely than fathers to plan out a killing.
Often mental health experts will find a parent is experiencing multiple stressors occurring at the same time or within a brief period, said Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman, a professor of forensic psychiatry and adjunct law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
"The more stressful those (factors) are, the more likely anyone is to become more violent," she said. "Sometimes there is a history of mental health, but even there it is such a rare thing and difficult to predict."
Predicting that a parent is at risk for murdering a child is difficult because the risk factors considered as red flags are one that most American parents experience at some point, Hatter Friedman said.
"Many people face eviction and would never dream of doing something like this," she added. "These are stressors that so many people have to face in their lives, that is why it's almost impossible to point to one thing."
What is also unusual is after allegedly killing her children, authorities said Nguyen also attempted to kill a non-family member − her ex-husband’s nephew, and the son of her landlord who lives in the adjacent home.
More:Family legal battle over $11k in unpaid rent preceded Upper Makefield shooting, documents show
Court documents suggest Nguyen had a contentious relationship over more than $11,000 in unpaid rent she owed, which led to the May 3 scheduled eviction. An attorney for the landlord claimed Nguyen was threatening and verbally abusive to her client and allegedly dumped dog feces by her front door.
County 911 records show police responded to four calls last year labeled as domestic-related at the Timber Ridge Road home where Nguyen and her sons lived. The most recent call was listed as a “follow up” on April 27, five days before police say that she shot her children. The county records do no provide any other details about the nature the calls including who made them.
Nguyen also faced an upcoming court hearing with her ex-husband Edward Tini, who wanted to stop a planned summer trip to Vietnam with their son. Tini said he feared his wife would take their son and never return, calling her a "classic parent kidnapper," in court documents.
Nguyen denied that she intended to remain in Vietnam and she was described as "insulted" by the accusations in a custody conference evaluator report.
Court records show that Nguyen made similar claims against a previous ex-husband, Scott Dinh, that led to a three year custody fight over their now 16-year-old son, who is the biological brother of Jeffrey. The couple divorced in 2009 and Dinh was awarded physical custody of the oldest child, then around age 4, and Nguyen physical custody of Jeffrey.
Attempts by this news organization to reach Dinh were unsuccessful, and we are not identifying the son because he is a minor. Phone numbers associated with his name were disconnected and emails were returned as undeliverable.
Before the divorce was finalized, Nguyen accused Dinh of repeatedly moving without notice to keep their son from her, a violation of their custody order. In 2016, she filed a motion in a Missouri county court seeking to prevent her ex-husband from relocating to Oregon.
A judge granted her request, and awarded Nguyen sole legal and physical custody of her oldest child, noting that he believed the mother could provide a better environment and describing her home as “more stable, which will better allow for adjustment to home, school and community.”
Shortly after the modified order was entered, Nguyen located her son in Oregon and took him back to Pennsylvania with her for the Christmas holidays, according to court documents.
But the reunion did not go well, and Nguyen let her son return to his father in Oregon after the holidays. Dinh then refused to let their son visit and Nguyen took him back to court. But this time the judge determined that uprooting the nearly 14-year-old boy would be a “substantial disruption” to his life.
The outcome of the earlier child custody case and the threat of a new custody fight could have triggered delusional thinking in Nguyen, said Dr. Richard Lettieri, a forensic neuropsychologist who researches parents who kill their children.
“Definitely among all the other stressors and the belief she is going to lose her kids,” he said. “I don’t want to live and I don’t want to leave my kids in this world.”
But image of an angry, out-of-control mother is far different than the woman she knew, said the Missouri family law attorney who represented Nguyen in her first custody fight
"She is very tiny, so her demure personality seemed to match her stature,” attorney Diane C. Howard said. “She was always very quiet, soft spoken, and pleasant to be around, even when dealing with the very stressful situation with her son."
Howard also recalled Nguyen as a mother who worked hard to locate her son and reestablish a relationship with him.
“Which makes this situation so puzzling,” she said.
More:Funeral set for brothers shot in Bucks County home. 'Jeffrey and Nelson were strong young men'
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: When parents kill. Mental health experts say red flags can be hard to see
