What a scum bag he's trying to blame it all on his bros! While he's the one with all the motive!
The telephone calls to his fugitive brothers, the desolate hide-out where he housed them in Tehama County, the video of his car driving past the murder victim's house – Chu Vue had an explanation for everything.
Vue, accused of masterminding the murder of his wife's lover, topped off his rebuttal of the prosecution's case with the two words:
"Absolutely not," the former Sacramento sheriff's deputy testified Wednesday, when asked by his lawyer if he had anything to do with the Oct. 15, 2008, shooting death of state correctional officer Steve Lo.
With his cross-examination still pending, Vue had the courtroom all to himself Wednesday, and he gave a full-throated denial, his first in the year and a half since he was arrested and charged with murder.
Prosecutors say Vue, 45, arranged a hit on Lo because the 39-year-old correctional officer was having an affair with the former deputy's wife.
In denying any involvement in the killing, Vue laid the blame on his younger brothers Gary Vue, 29, and Chong Vue, 31, the accused gunmen in the case. They were wanted for a murder in Minnesota at the time of the Lo shooting, which took place in the garage of the officer's Tambor Way home in south Sacramento.
Vue's narrative would not have been complete if he didn't account for his wife Chia Vue's affair with Lo. He said she told him about the dalliance several weeks before the killing, even giggled while telling him she was sleeping with several other employees at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, where she and Lo worked.
Chu Vue testified she told him in a September telephone message, "We're through." He could have the house, the kids, "everything," Vue said. With that, Vue started seeing other women, he said. "I never stopped loving Chia ... she's my first love," he said, but added that he had moved on.
Still, his brothers were extremely worried about their estranged sister-in-law's extracurricula
r love life, Vue testified. He said they got word her affair with Lo was on the rocks, which meant trouble for them, they thought.
It's the defense's theory the brothers believed Lo knew about them being fugitives through Chia Vue. The principle evidence in support of it came through Chu Vue's testimony. He said brother Chong spoke with him about his problematic marriage and that they also talked about Chia's relationship with Lo.
"Chong said, 'Can we trust this guy Steve Lo?' " Chu Vue testified. "I said, 'I don't know, but leave it alone. You go back to Minnesota.' "
In the background, Chu Vue testified he heard Gary Vue say, "This guy knows too much."
In his opening statement to the Sacramento Superior Court jury of six men and six women, Chu Vue's lawyer, Donald Masuda, said Gary Vue shot and killed Lo on his own, over fear that Lo would turn them in.
The defense theory conflicts with trial testimony that the two already had planned to drive back to Minnesota, see their kids one last time and then surrender. There also was a disconnect between defense testimony that the fugitive brothers surfaced in Sacramento around the time of the Lo killing to pay their respects to their ill father and the fact that they left town before they made the visit.
But Chu Vue used this testimony to give the jury an account of events that covered plenty of bases.
Surveillance videos taken from a security camera on Steve Lo's street show Vue's truck on the block on several occasions in the month before the killing. Vue testified he was only looking for his wife.
One of his drive-bys occurred on Sept. 24, 2008, after he said he was supposed to meet up with his wife at a gym not far from Lo's house. "After I did my workout, I figured I'd drive by and check if she was there," Vue told the jury. "I was just looking for her."
Numerous cell phone calls he made to his younger brothers in the days and weeks leading up to the killing were all about him telling them to go back to Minnesota to face the music on their 2001 murder case, not arranging any hit. Also, he said he wanted his brothers to see their father before they went back.
"Chong kept telling me he didn't have anything to do with the murder, that it was self-defense, that he would turn himself in and hire an attorney," Vue testified. "I believed him at that time."
Vue tearfully testified that his father made him promise to straighten his brothers out, that they were supposed to "make peace with my dad and see my mom" when they were in Sacramento, neither of which they did.
"I'm very disappointed," Vue said of his brothers.
Before the brothers popped up in Sacramento ahead of Lo's death, they stayed on the 20 acres Vue had purchased near Corning in Tehama County, in a cousin's name. He said he bought the place as a hunting and fishing getaway. The brothers, he said, were already on the lam, hiding out in Fresno, when he heard from them in 2007 and offered to house them in a mobile home on the property.
The move exposed him to the possibility of getting fired for harboring fugitives, Vue said. He said he feared his brothers would use that as leverage against him.
"I had a lot of risk that I would get caught and I would lose my job," Vue testified.
Read more:
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/09/09/3015334/vue-takes-stand-to-rebut-prosecutors.html#ixzz0z30zaDeh
