Couple get prison in murder of Liberty Village filmmaker. Judge refuses ‘shockingly lenient’ sentence for coverup - Toronto Star

Khoa Tran killed filmmaker Reeyaz Habib, 53, over a neighbour dispute about barbecue smoke. 

Reeyaz Habib, left, was killed on June 6, 2023. Khoa Tran, right, was convicted of second-degree murder; Isabelle Nguyen, centre, was convicted of accessory after the fact and indignity to a dead body.

A husband and wife nodded at each other from opposite sides of the courtroom Monday as they were sentenced to prison for the “senseless” killing of their Liberty Village neighbour. 

All because of some barbecue smoke. 

A jury earlier this year convicted 36-year-old Khoa Tran of second-degree murder for killing 53-year-old filmmaker Reeyaz Habib in his own unit on Western Battery Road in the middle of the night on June 6, 2023; Habib's screams for help woke up several neighbours. 

Tran’s wife, 30-year-old Isabelle Nguyen, was convicted of accessory after the fact — for urging the couple’s roommate to lie to police to give Tran a false alibi — and for committing an indignity to a body, by helping her husband dispose of Habib’s body, wrapped in blankets and towels, in their building’s garbage compactor.

On Monday, Superior Court Justice Kenneth Campbell imposed an automatic sentence of life imprisonment on Tran, with no eligibility to apply for parole for 16 years, while he sentenced Nguyen to six years in prison. 

The judge said he was “well satisfied beyond any reasonable doubt” of Tran’s motives, as tendered by the Crown: He decided to kill Habib “in order to end his consistent and bothersome” complaints about Tran’s balcony barbecue smoke getting into his upstairs unit. Habib had also been threatening to report the couple to the condo board because they were in violation of the rules by having someone who was not a relative living with them — a friend of Nguyen’s from Vietnam named Linh Hua, whom the couple were introducing to people as a cousin. 

Khoa Tran speaks by phone with Toronto police Const. Alex Daigle on June 9, 2023, about the disappearance of his neighbour, Reeyaz Habib. Daigle recorded the conversation in his cruiser using his body-worn camera.

“I readily acknowledge that the motives offered by the Crown, and obviously accepted by the jury, are poor reasons for killing anyone,” Campbell said. “There simply seems to be no limit to the violence that one person will inflict on another, for no good reason. This case is a tragic example of this sad, but indisputable fact.”

Tran and Nguyen were on bail during their trial, which was revoked when they were convicted in June. On Monday, Nguyen sat in the prisoner’s box in a grey blazer, often with her head bowed, while Tran sat in the jury box in a brown coat. Nguyen received standard enhanced credit for her time spent in pre-sentence custody, leaving her with about five-and-a-half years left to serve.

Khoa Tran leaving court earlier this year.

Habib’s family watched the proceedings via Zoom. In emotional victim impact statements delivered to the court in September, Habib’s family and friends remembered him as a supportive son, a protective older brother, a teacher to his niece, a friendly neighbour, and a storyteller at heart, who later in life left a successful career in investment banking to pursue filmmaking. He had almost finished his first feature film, ”Fat Lady Sriracha,” when he was murdered.

Campbell found that the murder was not spontaneous, but rather a “senseless and selfish act” that demonstrated some level of planning by Tran, although it still fell short of first-degree murder, which Crown attorneys Anna Tenhouse and Nathaniel Smith were not suggesting. The Crown had been seeking an 18-year parole ineligibility period, while defence lawyer Liam O’Connor asked for 12 to 13. 

White sheets were found nailed to the windows in Reeyaz Habib’s condo, as police investigated his disappearance in early June 2023. 

Tran “sought to distance himself from his inexplicable and violent conduct” by carefully cleaning Habib’s unit — nailing sheets to the windows to avoid being seen — throwing out some of Habib’s possessions as seen on surveillance footage, and dumping his body in the trash compactor, the judge said. 

Handwritten notes left next to the body read: “Can someone lift this into the trash? Very heavy,” and “Please do not open, lots of sharp metal and glass inside from renovation (don’t worry, we wrapped it in fabric).”

One of the notes found near Reeyaz Habib’s body in the trash compactor. 

Tran’s fingerprint was found on one of the notes, while Nguyen’s DNA was linked to the material in which the body was wrapped. A pathologist couldn’t determine a cause of death because Habib’s body had already begun to decompose by the time it was found, but a number of pre- and post-death injuries were noted.

When police spoke with neighbours after Habib was reported missing, and before the identity of the body was confirmed, both Tran and Nguyen expressed surprise.

“Our neighbour missing is extremely nerve-wracking,” Tran told a police officer on June 9, 2023. “Excuse me if I’m a little tongue-tied.”

Isabelle Nguyen speaks with Toronto police officers on her doorstep in Liberty Village on June 9, 2023, as they investigate the disappearance of her neighbour, Reeyaz Habib.

Campbell saved his harshest words for Nguyen, whose sentence was at the upper limit of what the Crown was requesting. Defence lawyer Tyler Smith had asked for a conditional sentence — house arrest — as more than six months in custody would practically guarantee that Nguyen is deported to Vietnam. Unlike Tran, she’s not a Canadian citizen. 

“I will not impose any such shockingly lenient disposition on Ms. Nguyen,” Campbell said, adding that Nguyen “has no one to thank but herself” if she’s deported.

“I will not impose a wholly unfit sentence just to assist her through these troubling times of her own making.” 

He said Nguyen “knew full well” that her husband was going to kill Habib and that she did “all that she could over an extended period of time” to help Tran evade arrest. 

“These were callous and selfish acts taken to shield and protect her husband, the murderer,” Campbell said. “These were grave and heinous offences for which Ms. Nguyen is entirely personally responsible.”

While previously she may have been a hard-working, kind and supportive person with no criminal record, the judge said, “these things are not chips that can be traded away to excuse her subsequent terrible criminal misconduct.”

Jacques Gallant is a Toronto-based reporter covering courts, justice and legal affairs for the Star. Reach him by email at jgallant@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @JacquesGallant